Hostage Run

  And, in fact, the supply ship took a sickening dip. Rick lost his footing. His grip on the Pilot Boar’s throat loosened. The beast seized the opportunity, seized Rick by his arm and by the front of his shirt, and used his mighty muscles to hurl the human intruder across the cockpit. Rick’s back crashed into the cockpit door. The large iron bolt jutted into his spine, shocking the breath out of him.

  Now, carried on the lightning, the supply ship sailed into the central vortex of the purple clouds. The glass of the windshield went starkly black, a blackness riven by the steady bright white flash. In the instant Rick stood stunned against the door, he saw that black sky outside and remembered the living blackness of the Canyon of Nothingness, its power to draw a person into itself forever.

  On the other side of the cockpit, the Pilot Boar spotted his pistol where it had fallen. The ship dipped and swung. The gun slid toward the storage bay. The Boar moved unsteadily away from the wall to go after it.

  Rick, meanwhile, saw his sword leaning where it had fallen, its silver blade wedged between the control panel and the wall, its carved hilt sticking free. Holding with one hand to the iron bolt in the metal loops of the door and frame, he reached for the sword with his other hand. His fingers scraped the hilt. He felt the power of Mariel’s presence. He stretched farther. He got hold of Mariel’s image. He grabbed the sword. He pulled it free.

  A second later, the Pilot Boar caught up with his pistol. Bending over, he swept the gun up in one hand. The ship swung unsteadily on the lightning and the Pilot Boar stumbled against the far wall, waving his arms wildly as he tried to regain his balance. He tried to bring the pistol to bear on Rick.

  Rick held the sword with one hand. With the other, he pulled the door’s iron bolt out of its loops. He hurled it at the Pilot Boar.

  The heavy bolt spun through the air, end over end. It was a good throw. The bolt went straight for the Pilot Boar’s head. The Boar had to duck—and the wild movement of the ship made him stagger. For yet another second, he could not get off a shot with his pistol.

  As the Pilot Boar fought to steady himself and take aim, Rick grabbed hold of the unbolted door’s latch and tried to pull the door open. It wouldn’t budge. He lifted his sword and jammed its point into the doorframe. It stuck. He pressed against the hilt for leverage—used all his strength, pulling at the door.

  The door came open.

  Rick had seen the blackness outside, and he knew its power. It was the living nothingness of Kurodar’s evil, hungry to pull everything into itself. The lightning flashed and sizzled just below the ship’s belly, but it was the blackness that filled the doorway and the blackness was hungry. The minute the door opened, the powerful draw of the dark began to seize at everything inside the cockpit and suck it out. The pistol flew from the Pilot Boar’s hand and spun out of the cockpit into the dark. The Boar himself, massive as he was, began to slide across the floor toward the opening, fighting as he stumbled toward blackness and death.

  Rick too. Holding on to the door’s loop, he felt his feet trying to fly out from under him, being pulled out into the darkness. With one hand, he pressed hard against his sword. He held it in place in the doorframe so that the blade lay across the door’s opening. With his other hand, he fought to hold the door open. He dug his heels into the floor to keep from flying out.

  The Pilot Boar had nothing to hold on to. Fighting the draw of the blackness, he fell on his piggy butt. He fought and struggled and kicked, but the blackness drew him steadily across the floor. At the last moment, his enormous form was lifted into the air. He let out a deep, ragged, snorting scream. And then the darkness sucked him out of the cockpit. As he sailed out the door, he struck Mariel’s blade. The Boar was cut in half. With a flash of purple energy, his two pieces vanished and he was gone, back into the digital nothingness from which he’d sprung.

  Rick shifted his weight behind the door and, giving a grunt, shouldered it shut. He wrangled Mariel’s sword from the frame and drove the blade through the loops to hold the door in place.

  The supply ship continued its flight through the black sky, buoyed by the jagged lightning. Fighting its motion, Rick staggered across the cockpit to the pilot’s seat. He reached the chair in front of the wheel and dropped into it, breathless, grateful.

  It was only then, with the battle over, that the passionate warrior grew calm enough to remember his prayers.

  Thank you, he thought, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

  He took control of the supply ship and steered it toward the WarCraft.

  31. ALONE

  MOLLY’S HEART POUNDED, her mind rushed. Victor One lay motionless on the ground at her feet, his face bathed in blood. Was he alive? She couldn’t tell. She couldn’t see whether or not he was breathing.

  The drone was at the far edge of the swamp now. She could hear the hunter machine’s propellers working as it banked in the dark, turning to come back toward her. Victor had shot out the machine’s spotlight, but Molly knew it must have tracking machines inside it, too. It wouldn’t need the light to find her, or to gun her down.

  Her first feeling when she saw Victor fall had been a sense of utter helplessness. In the brief time she had been with him, she had gotten used to having a trained fighter on her side. She had quickly gotten used to following him, letting him protect her. Now she was alone, and she didn’t think she was strong enough to survive.

  But she remembered how she had felt in her cell with the Giant coming to get her. She remembered her despair, and how she had risen above her despair and decided to fight. She was not going to stop fighting now.

  The drone finished its circle. It started to head back toward her across the open ground.

  Molly looked around her, panting with fear, her eyes wide and white. She had to get away. She had to hide. What should she do?

  Before she could come up with an answer, a sound came to her, just audible under the sound of the oncoming aircraft.

  A groan.

  She looked down at Victor One. His bloody head moved slightly. He was still alive!

  She couldn’t just leave him lying out there exposed. If she abandoned him and ran, the drone would riddle the fallen soldier with bullets.

  The sound of the drone’s propellers grew louder as it flew swiftly toward her. For another second, Molly stood where she was, too frightened to do what she knew she had to do. Openmouthed, she looked down. Victor One stirred. He groaned again. His bloody head shook back and forth as if he were trying to awaken himself.

  That did it. Molly started to move. She stooped to the fallen Victor One. The movement brought her out of the shelter of the tree. She glanced up. The drone was bearing down on her. She had only a few seconds. She bent over and grabbed Victor One’s wrists, one in each hand. She tried to drag him toward the trunk.

  “Oof,” she said.

  The man was as heavy as cement. Athletic as she was, Molly had to use all her strength to get him moving. Victor One groaned again—and Molly groaned as she dragged him over the rough forest earth and behind the tree trunk. She looked toward the drone again and felt her heart turn dark as she saw how close it was. If its spotlight had still been working, the beam might have already touched her, the gunfire might have already begun.

  She let out a final cry of effort. Straining hard, she pulled Victor One’s body across the ground. She got his head behind the tree trunk. Quickly, she dropped his arms and rushed around to his feet to turn him lengthwise so his whole body would be covered.

  The moment she ran out from behind the tree, the drone opened fire.

  Molly screamed as the bullets flashed through the dark. She threw herself on top of Victor One, shielding him with her body just as he had shielded her. The drone swept over them both, firing all the way. She could hear the slugs thudding into the earth all around her. She expected to feel them tear into her flesh at any moment. It seemed almost a miracle to her when the drone passed over and she was still unhurt.

&n
bsp; She rolled off Victor and lay on the cold ground, trembling. Shakily, she rose to her knees. She looked down at Victor One. He was stirring more steadily now. He seemed to be trying to wake up, fighting to wake up. His head rocked back and forth. His eyelids fluttered. It seemed he couldn’t quite break through.

  And the drone was circling around yet again, coming back yet again. Molly understood the truth: she could dodge the machine herself, but she couldn’t keep pulling Victor out of the way. He was too heavy. Her strength would give out. There had to be something else she could do.

  The drone continued arcing around. In the next few seconds, it would come back toward them.

  She had only one option. The thought of it was awful, but she could see no other way.

  She waited. She watched the drone turn. She stood still, letting it come at her.

  Then she ran straight across its path.

  It was the only thing she could think of. Act as a decoy. Draw the drone away from Victor One. If she could outrace it for just a few seconds, if she could take the thing away from him, then . . . well, maybe it would run out of bullets. Maybe it would get lost in the woods. Maybe it would think that Victor One was dead and leave him alone. Maybe he would regain consciousness and escape. Something good might happen, anyway—even if she wouldn’t be around to see it.

  She darted across the drone’s path. It worked. Glancing at the drone, she saw it adjust its course to follow her. She sprinted through the dark, her powerful legs taking long strides. She heard the drone right behind her, its propeller noise growing louder. She barreled past trees, branches scratching at her face. She kept her eyes down, trying to negotiate a path over the forest floor.

  But the noise of the drone grew louder and louder and finally Molly couldn’t help herself: she looked over her shoulder. She cried out in fear. It was so close! It was right on top of her . . .

  And now it started firing, the red death spitting in streams from its guns.

  Molly tried to face forward, but it was too late. Looking back like that, even for that second, she had lost her way. She stepped off the edge of the hard earth into a swampy patch of wet ground. She was thrown off balance. Her knees buckled. She went down hard.

  The fall probably saved her life: just as she was toppling over, she felt a hot flame of agony streak across her shoulder. She’d been hit. A bullet had found her. The drone had her in its sights and very well might have torn her apart right then and there if she hadn’t gone splashing down into the freezing water.

  Panicked, she rolled onto her back. She looked up, terrified. She saw the drone bearing down on her, adjusting its guns to find her where she lay helpless on the wet earth.

  The red stream of bullets shifted. It ate up the ground in front of her, heading straight toward her. There was no time to roll away, no time to avoid the line of flaming slugs about to cut her in half.

  Later she had the image of that moment frozen in her mind. Forever after she could see the last bullet splashing into the wet earth inches from her feet, the stream of gunfire about to pass over her, through her.

  Then, with a powerful blast that bathed Molly’s face in heat, the drone exploded.

  For a second the forest night was bright with flame. Molly stared in amazement at the spectacle as the fireball that had been the drone continued hurtling toward her, then hurtled over her and dropped hissing into the swamp beyond. She raised her arm to protect herself as bits of fiery debris rained down on top of her.

  A second later, it was over. Silence descended over the forest again.

  Gasping for breath, Molly slowly lowered her arm and looked around the dark forest. What had just happened?

  Then she saw.

  There stood Victor One. He was on his feet again, gripping the pistol again, still pointing it at the place where the drone had been. His face was a mask of blood. His eyes were white in the red mess, but blinking hard as if he could barely keep them open, barely keep himself conscious. Yet, somehow, injured as he was, he had managed to blast the machine out of the air. He had managed to save her life.

  As Molly watched, stunned, Victor One’s hands fell as if he were too weak to keep holding the pistol up. His eyes moved slowly to her. His voice was thick and heavy, his words slurred.

  “You all right . . .?”

  She began to nod, but a fiery whiplash of pain went across her shoulder. She stopped nodding. She gripped her arm.

  “I think . . . I think it shot me.”

  Victor One came toward her. He moved stiffly, unsteadily, lumbering step by clumsy step. He looked as if he might fall over at any moment.

  He didn’t though. He stood above her. He holstered his weapon—it took him three tries to get it in the slot. Then he knelt beside her. Molly flinched and gave a little gasp as he touched her wounded arm, turned it so he could examine the damage. Her running shirt was sliced open as by a knife and an angry red line was slashed across her flesh.

  “Just a scratch,” Victor One said thickly. “It’ll burn a while, but we’ll get it cleaned up and you’ll be all right. You were lucky.”

  “What about you?” she said. “I thought you were dead.”

  “I was lucky too,” he told her. “The bullet went straight through my head and blew my brains out. I’m completely unhurt.”

  She gaped at him for a moment. Then, bloody as he was, dull-eyed as he was, he gave her a lopsided smile, and she understood he was joking.

  “Very funny,” she said.

  “It’s nothing. A flesh wound. It just knocked me silly, that’s all. Come on,” he told her. “Let’s get you fixed up and get out of here.”

  32. SNAKE WARRIORS

  UP CLOSE LIKE this, the WarCraft was a horror. As big as the sky itself, it seemed half monster, half machine. The Octo-Guardian wrapped around the central black disk seemed at one with the craft. The former Troll’s malevolent yellow eyes seemed the WarCraft’s eyes, his slimy slithering tentacles seemed to be the WarCraft’s arms, stretching out into the vast blackness all around it.

  As Rick’s supply ship drew near, the WarCraft filled his windshield. The great yellow eyes stared in at him. Rick was at the supply ship’s controls now, guiding the small vehicle up the river of lightning toward the immense mothership. To his left and his right he saw other ships, ships just like his, riding up their own flashing white passages toward the WarCraft’s open bays. Above all of them, the Octo-Guardian’s tentacles waved and threatened.

  And now Rick saw something else as well. As his ship sailed closer to the WarCraft, as the tentacles stretched out directly above him, he saw that each tentacle was equipped with a single yellow eye of its own embedded in its tip: a sort of miniature version of the two vicious and malicious eyes staring their hate-filled stare from the Octo-Guardian’s head. The tentacles undulated through the darkness, bringing their eyes close first to this ship, then to another, then another. Rick realized the Octo-Guardian was inspecting the incoming supply wagons. It was making sure that nothing dangerous or threatening was inside them, nothing that might make its way into Kurodar’s WarCraft. Rick had once snuck his way into the fortress down below, and clearly Kurodar was determined never to let that happen again. Rick did not want to think about what would happen if a tentacle eye looked through his windshield and saw not a Pilot Boar but Rick himself at the helm.

  Rick was weary now—almost dazed with weariness. His fight with the Pilot Boar had sapped his strength, left him exhausted. He felt as if he no longer had the power of will he needed to take control of the Realm’s reality, to change his shape back into that of a Boar.

  But even now, even as he thought that, one of the enormous tentacles began to snake through space in his direction. Rick’s hand moved to the sword in his belt. He was hoping he could draw some strength—at least some inspiration—from Mariel’s presence in the metal. He touched the sword’s hilt and, sure enough, she was still there, still with him . . .

  When the tentacle passed by his windshield, the yello
w eye hovering just outside the glass inspected him and saw the very image of the Pilot Boar whom Rick had cut in half just moments ago.

  Then the tentacle and its eye passed over. The moment it was gone, Rick breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed his will—and immediately snapped back into his normal shape.

  The ship continued sailing over the river of lightning. The head of the Octo-Guardian grew enormous above him, its eyes staring down with a sort of madness of hatred in them. The portal of the WarCraft yawned blackly up ahead.

  Just before Rick docked with the great WarCraft, he glanced down at his palm. The timer in his hand had blinked down to 1:05 now. He had over an hour, he told himself. But he knew that was deceptive. The time he had spent in the MindWar Realm had already messed with his brain in some ways. Those headaches. Those horrible nightmares. The longer he stayed here, the worse the effects would be. And this time, the damage might be deep and permanent.

  He drew a worried breath and looked away from the blinking numbers. Words his father had taught him once came back to him now: Let not your heart be troubled. Neither let it be afraid. Good advice. He had to finish this, no matter what happened, no matter how long it took, no matter what happened to him in the process. It had to be done—so there was no sense worrying about it.

  The WarCraft came closer. Its sleek black side and gaping portal filled the windshield completely. The supply ship broke away from the river of lightning and glided free toward the open portal. Rick felt a little spasm of fear as the lightning-striped blackness of space was replaced by the silver walls of the landing tube. The supply ship had now entered the WarCraft.

  Here we go, he thought.

  The ship grumbled and rocked as its base scraped over the base of the landing tube. Rick gripped the wheel tightly, his breath coming fast and sharp. Bright light appeared up ahead. Grew brighter. And then the ship broke out of the tube and slipped into a landing mechanism. The mechanism snapped shut around the ship’s base, holding it in place. The supply ship had landed. Rick was inside the WarCraft.