The Celestial Way

Chapter 18 - Questioning the Way

CHAPTER 18 – QUESTIONING THE WAY

"When you have no strength, no wits, no will,

When you are small of stature, dark of mind, weak of spirit,

What are you to do?

Remember, you are Light.

Your soul is vaster than any illusion before your eyes."

– Ver Lumineo, "A Journey To The Sun"

The Present, somewhere within the "Hot Zone", Terra Para

Airo fired a shot over his shoulder, running toward the grav-shaft, when another Revenant burst from the wall ahead and barred his way.

Brandishing his katana in one hand and the veronite blaster in the other, Airo slashed at the apparition using his momentum. The Revenant raised a spectral appendage and parried the blow. The action caught Airo off-guard, making him reel. He nearly kicked by reflex, yet remembered the horrific nature of his opponent and shot the Revenant with the blaster instead, the power armor assisting to make the awkward attack work. The projectile hit home, and the Revenant dissipated in a cloud of brilliant energy.

Airo saw motion in the corner of his eye and turned rapidly, falling on one knee. He fired at the pursuing Revenant, their deadly energy beams missing him by mere inches. Taking them out, he quickly jumped backward, entering the grav-shaft's field. Ascending upward, he took a second to catch his breath. That Revenant had parried the strange crystal blade of his katana. Without an active resonance field in the vicinity. This was trouble.

The skyship's nolreck was eerily calm. There were no explosions or alarms, only a disquieting chime coming from the PA system. The cyan-purple interior lighting pulsed in rhythm with the sound. The attack had come at the worst possible time – while Airo was sleeping. Stimulants or no, his body was already pushed long ago to its limits, and he couldn't rest in standing position anymore by locking the power armor's joints. As for rest at all, he needed it – however fleetingly – otherwise his performance dropped beyond the critical threshold: that of the absolute peak.

And now entropy had finally taken its toll.

Airo left the grav-shaft, arriving before the bridge. A dozen Radiant Knights were fighting a furious battle at the bridge doors, as Revenant poured from every possible angle. Airo dashed into the fray, firing the veronite blaster and slashing with the katana left and right. Fortunately, the Knights were all carrying resonance fields with them, the whole area simmering faintly as the exotic creatures equalized the scales, reducing the effectiveness of the Revenant's attacks significantly. Yet the enemy had overwhelming numbers, with more and more Revenant appearing as the Knights cut them down with their own weapons made of light or shot them with heavy particle bolters. Airo fought his way to the bridge, and entered without slowing down as the doors opened to admit him into the nerve center of the skyship.

Inside, the situation was even more critical. The bridge had turned into a battlezone. Crew stations were blasted or destroyed. Revenant were everywhere, relentlessly engaging the defenders. The bridge's observation window was shattered, cold wind howling inward as a blizzard raged outside.

"Cloud! Status report!" Airo shouted, and staggered as a Revenant beam hit him. He dived for cover behind the CIC mainframe, returning fire.

"We are surrounded, Commander," the SAI responded at once, tone completely matter-of-fact. "Sensors indicate no less than fourteen hundred enemy combatants. The skyship has sustained moderate damage, mainly to its weapon systems. The bridge helm is critically damaged, and four of the five manual control sets are currently inoperational."