Rise of the Defiant: Book Two of the Warpmancer Series Read online

  James felt a sense of identity emanate from it. A sense of value and a connection to him – its creator and shaper.

  ‘Well done. You are not just some army trained telekineticist. You have the promise to be a true Warpmancer, like that of my people.’

  ‘What’s the difference,’ James asked, cupping the fire in his hand. He felt its warmth and knew that if it was any other type of fire. He could be burnt – but it was his fire.

  ‘The Imperials train Warpmancers en masse, but they have lost the spiritual importance of true Warpmancy. They are like children flinging mud. You – you have the capacity to be a god.’

  There it was again. Krag-Zot was calling him a god. How can I be a god if I don’t even believe in one?

  ‘They call you an Immortal,’ James asked, changing the topic, ‘do you truly live forever?’

  ‘Nothing lasts forever – but for my purpose, I do.’

  ‘How did you become this way?’

  Krag-Zot didn’t reply immediately. A crease seemed to cross his brow and his underbite rose slightly.

  ‘Warpmancy. I gave everything to the Warp and it gave me eternity.’

  James stared at the Areq, giving him a look from head to toe. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the only exposed flesh on Krag-Zot was his head. The rest was cybernetic.

  ‘You’re part android?’

  ‘It becomes easier to control the Warp when you can use your entire body as a conduit. I gave up my worldly flesh lifetimes ago.’

  ‘Does the machinery prevent your body from aging?’

  ‘Yes, but that is not what makes me Immortal. Even if I lived in a body of flesh – it would still decay. My spirit is what is Immortal.’

  ‘What happens when your body dies?’

  ‘Before that happens, I utilise the Warp to transfer my consciousness to a new body. That typically requires a full body Conduit, however, which would make a flesh body unable to undertake the task.’

  ‘So you can pretty much live forever?’

  ‘Yes – yes, I could.’

  Krag-Zot’s mood seemed to sink. He looked away from James into a mirror on the apartment wall.

  ‘You sacrifice much more than limbs to become what I am. You sacrifice your own life. You can never die peacefully, no matter how much you may wish it. I am a warrior at heart, but sometimes I wish for a quiet end. Sometimes, I just wish it all to end.’

  ‘Why don’t you end it all yourself?’

  There was a pause, then Krag-Zot looked into James’ eyes. ‘Because I am afraid.’

  The revelation didn’t shock James but it seemed to send shockwaves through what had previously seemed a figure of stoicism.

  ‘I’ve lived for so long,’ Krag-Zot continued, ‘while so many else have died. Do I deserve this? Doesn’t matter. What does matter – is that I’m afraid of what will happen when I finally die.’

  ‘Everyone is afraid of death…’

  ‘Not Immortals – we’re supposed to have overcome that fear. We are endless.’

  ‘Then why become Immortals?’

  That seemed to catch Krag-Zot’s interest.

  ‘Why become immortal if you don’t fear death? I would think that the only reason. Even if you live forever – the fact that you chose to become that way means you fear dying.’

  They both remained quiet for a while after until James broke the silence.

  ‘What’s the next lesson?’

  ‘No more Warpmancy today. I can see your head is getting sore. Instead, I want to accustom you to a strong possibility. Sit…’

  James did as instructed. Krag-Zot did the same.

  ‘I respect you, Boymancer. I may be your mentor but I can see a spark in you which is something I’d willingly follow. Many others would do the same. You need to come to terms with that. Many will want to follow you and many will want to die for you. Are you comfortable with that?’

  Am I? James had thought about it before but it was still something he struggled to grasp. Smith and Marshal had mentioned an Aura of Authority caused by his Warpmancy – but that was gone now. He had run out of his Warp reserves. Yet people still looked to him. The Troopers in the hall, his comrades from Zona Nox and even this Areq – a being who had tried to kill him.

  ‘Do people follow me because of my skill? Why? What do people see in me?’

  ‘You are a boy of many talents and respectable prowess – but many an elite soldier is. You are a good warrior, but not the best. No. People follow you because you keep on going. When lesser men would curl up and give up, you persevere. You are not a leader because you are powerful – you are a leader because you do not allow people to give up. Remember that.’

  James nodded. He would.

  ‘What do I do? People follow me but I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing myself. Smith says I need to avenge my people. I want that vengeance – I really do…but how? I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘This isn’t only your fight. Your homeworld and the birthplace of your species were all human worlds. They were lost to the same enemy – all humans have the right to fight that enemy.’

  ‘They don’t know about it…’

  ‘And that is what you will change.’

  Krag-Zot walked towards the apartment window and gazed out the one-way glass. He watched as the city-life of Nova Zarxa began as flying cars darted between towers. Below, a cold glow rose from the crystal mining below.

  ‘You will be that change,’ he continued. ‘I call you a potential god and I really mean it. Every people needs a messiah. Your Terra is an archaic ideology clinging to old hope and ill-suited solutions. Your people need a new symbol. You have been wronged. I have been wronged. The Empire of Xank was founded to avenge the destruction of our world Resh – but we became as bad as the Imperials. This new crusade must not be a hollow desire for revenge and blood.

  ‘No, Boymancer – you will be a symbol of hope, justice and progress. You will be the messiah that my people lacked. You will lead your people against their own oppressors. Dedelux will fall by the people. Zerian. The Gangs. Even the Troopers. All will mean nothing. You will re-shape the galaxy – until finally, you free your worlds.’

  James was terrified as Krag-Zot spoke.

  ‘What if I don’t want to be their messiah? Why can’t they find their own way? They have a right to run their own lives.’

  ‘Do they do that now?’

  That gave James pause.

  ‘They wake up, work, breed and die. This is the way it has always been. They live in tedium with drugs – chemical and otherwise – giving them the occasional meaning. Would you withhold from them something more? Your people deserve more. Under the Xank, I helped enslave billions. We created slaves out of species, but what I realised the most was how willing they were to become one. They fought, they lost and they accepted their loss. Under us, they were given purpose. They were slaves – but better than any servant. They were involved in a crusade.’

  ‘But people have a right to be free.’

  ‘Freedom can only be given. It cannot be attained by oneself – no slave can unfasten their own chains. Your people – the people on this blighted rock, once my home – are slaves. You will free them. One is only free with purpose. You will give them purpose.’

  Krag-Zot turned to James, who was now sitting back in his chair, unable to speak.

  ‘You will be a symbol - a god – and they will call you Defiant!’

  “Liberty is dangerous. Prisons have safety. Dictators are stagnant and known. Liberty is chaos. Liberty is the unknown. Liberty is what every society deserves – a bright and vibrant future of uncertainty and wonder.” – Jeffan Grouger, Ganymede Activist

  Chapter 9. Freedom

  Defiance is what the people of Zeruit needed. It was what Leri required of them. The Zangorian thought this as he stood on the precipice of a hill overlooking Bexong.

  The settlement was but a hamlet compared to what Leri had encountered in his career as a Word Lectorat
e soldier – but was apparently the home of the rebels Leri needed to start his revolution.

  Leri was not afraid of being seen standing on the hilltop. He wore his red cape – the very same taken from the battlefield at Fort Nox. He stood with his flesh arm by his side, his new arm clutching a Kuru, a traditional Zangorian spear. He stood on the edge of the grassy knoll, watching the Zangorian workers below. Each one carried a pipe linked up to a barrel on their backs.

  They trudged down the long lines of upturned soil, poking the tip of their pipes into the soil to suction out the juicy worms below. This was the main form of agriculture that the Zangorian war-machine relied upon. Patrolling the fields and further on were groups of hovering drones. Each drone possessed a single cyclops eye and a single arm. When a worker slacked off or misbehaved, the drone would deliver a shock to them. The shock could be adjusted to different severities. Many of the workers simply jolted but Leri watched as a few were flung back, twitching.

  According to Peron, the villagers seemed to believe that the drones were the ultimate authority – and in many ways, they may have been. Many of these Zangorians had been born into this community and had known nothing else. The drones were their overseers – unspeaking overseers. They undertook their job and loaded the tramways because of habit and fear, nothing more.

  Leri leapt off his perch and began surfing down the hill. Some workers must have heard him as they lifted their beaks.

  Multiple clicks and squawks followed.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Outsider?’

  ‘Don’t look, the overseers will hurt you.’

  Leri continued his advance, unperturbed. He landed upon solid ground with a jolt. He used his Kuru to steady his landing and then propel him forward towards the closest drone. Before the robot could react, the point of the spear had impaled it and then left. Leri turned and spun, smacking a drone behind him with full force, denting its side and destroying its vitals.

  No worker continued harvesting the worms. Their eyes were all fixed on this stranger destroying their oppressors.

  All the drones, detecting the danger, charged towards him. They spoke in robotic emotionless voices.

  ‘Stranger, you are in an unauthorised area – identify yours…’

  Just to be smashed or stabbed or kicked or punched. Even when the drone AI realised he was a foe, their attempts at electrocuting him were to no avail.

  Wires shot out at him were easily dodged and every bot that came past the range of his spear met his steel-clad talon. The dirt surrounding him was becoming a heap of beeping, smoking, charred metal – yet more drones kept coming. They were weak and Leri could dispatch each one easily – but there were so many.

  He was tiring. A drone shot a wire at him and just as he dodged, he felt a sharp stab as he was shocked by a drone to his rear. The pain was excruciating. He tried to steady himself, but he could not help but shake.

  The drones were surrounding him. Then he heard a shout. A battle cry.

  ‘Rii!’ a myriad of voices shouted in unison – as drones began to fall.

  Orange feathered arms tore at metallic limbs. Beaks hit steel and zaps contrasted with squawks and squeals. The drones turned to ignore Leri.

  ‘Get back to your work…’ a drone said, just before being torn apart by two young Zangorians, as if the drone was a rope in tug-of-war.

  Eventually, there was only silence.

  Every drone was disabled, left smoking in heaps. Leri remained crouched as countless beady eyes stared at him with awe.

  ‘Make way!’ a creaky voice sounded above the quiet.

  The voice belonged to a grey Zangorian possessing many ruffled feathers, including a wisp of them below his beak – like what humans called beards.

  ‘I am the Elder of Bexong, stranger. My name is Gura-Teng. What can I call our liberator?’

  Leri looked up at him and remembered what the people had shouted. ‘Rii’ – Freedom. It was apt a name as any.

  ‘My name is Rii and I have come to free my people.’

  

  The hall was filled with a joy that Leri knew they had never experienced before. The sights, sounds and taste of the air itself was that of elation and hope. One would normally feel quite silly to think of happiness and joy having a taste and smell but Leri experienced all of it here in Bexong.

  Men (for there were only men in Bexong) and male children sang and danced. They shared beverages and stories of their short but successful revolution.

  Gura-Teng was speaking to Leri, or Rii. He liked the name. His real name was a symbol of his past life, meaning ‘waiting to be free’ while his new name was a sign of his willingness to fight for a new world. A world of freedom.

  ‘We got by in Bexong,’ Gura-Teng was saying, ‘but it was never a life. The metal-lords ruled us and hurt us. They never killed us but they didn’t have to. Sometimes we killed ourselves. They never took our lives but they had already eliminated our ability to live. Thank you, once again, for freeing us…Rii.’

  Leri did not reply for a while. He continued to watch. The joyful faces of the children were what caught his eyes. His only memory of children was from his past lives. He remembered joy there but not in his own existence. There was a big difference between remembering and seeing. To Leri, the expressions on these youths’ faces were liberating.

  ‘Do not thank me till you are truly free,’ Leri replied. For there was still much to do. ‘Your people are not the only slaves. Your metal-overlords were but pawns. What do you know of your oppression?’

  Gura-Teng looked slightly taken aback, the tufts of greying feathers underneath his beak swayed as he took in a deep breath.

  ‘I have lived for a long time, much longer than my kin usually survive. In that time, I have learnt one thing above all – how little I actually know.

  ‘From what I do know – the metal-lords, as you said, were just pawns. We have had the dark walkers investigate our homes before. They are the ones who take us in the night and then return us to our homes the next day. It has happened to all of us, but we do not remember what they did to us. There was seldom violence – we never put up a fight.’

  Unfortunately, Leri did know what the ‘dark walkers’ did to the men of this village. They milked them for their seed so to breed more Zangorian soldiers and labourers. This was the life of a serf – they lived for labour and their seed.

  ‘There is much more to life than this, you know.’

  ‘We heard rumours from the occasional supply caravan – when we still got caravans. Now everything is sped in by those metal tracks. Last stranger here came when I was a child.’

  Leri was once again reminded of the total insular nature of these villages. The people of Zeruit, his people, were treated like machines. They had a function and no permission to stray from that mission. It was…disgusting.

  Leri knocked over his stool as he stood up. The thud of wood on stone somehow managed to silence the music and attract everyone else’s attention.

  As everyone stared, Leri spoke.

  ‘Zangorians – my kindred, my brothers – I am Rii. In your tongue, this is called Freedom – Liberator. As my name commands, I am here to free you…all of you…’

  A few Zangorian men whooped in excitement but the majority remained quiet.

  ‘I cannot claim credit for throwing down your metal-overlords. That was you. You chose to pick up stick, shovel and rock and use them to undo centuries of dictatorship. I may have kicked the rock but all of you are responsible for causing the landslide. For this, I cannot claim responsibility for freeing you.

  ‘I have come to this planet – our home – to retract a great wrong. I have come to FREE our people!’

  This time, a much larger group gave out cheers. Leri let them cheer before he silenced them with a wave of his mechanical arm.

  ‘There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of villages just like Bexong on this planet. Each and every one, ruled by our oppressors. Dark walkers, metal-o
verlords and much more stand in our way…’

  This silenced the group. It seemed many hadn’t thought of this before.

  ‘They will stand in our way,’ Leri repeated, ‘they will try to stop the tides of freedom. They will try to enslave us or slaughter us. They have weapons capable of wiping out peoples thousands greater than us.’

  Fear now gripped the group. Even Gura-Teng was leaning back in his chair, gripping the armrests until his talons made scratches.

  ‘They will stand in our way – I say, let ‘em! Our people have lived far too long in servitude. I say it’s time to fight. Not to keel over and beg. Not to apathetically let them deny us our futures and families. They will stand in our way. We will push them right over!’

  Everyone stood. Trills and cheers and whoops and shouts of agreement drowned out all other sounds. Men turned to each other, hyping each other up. Children, unable to understand most of what Leri said, picked up on the excitement and were cheering too.

  Gura-Teng was the only one not smiling.

  ‘You have sent my people to their death.’

  Leri spoke to him without looking.

  ‘Better to die free than live another moment a slave.’

  Gura-Teng nodded but didn’t smile. The old Zangorian knew of necessity, he just didn’t like it. Bexong would fight for freedom. Bexong would fight and Leri would lead them.

  “We persevere.” – Red Sand rancher, North of Galis Lake.

  Chapter 10. New Struggles

  Extos III rose across the horizon, bathing the silver towers of Nexus in a warm glow. The night was over. Day-ports began to open their metal shutters, blue energy shields activating to keep out the toxins of the cold outside. Their night-port cousins remained open, while some closed for the day. Different buildings needed to take turns to conserve energy. This was the way of Nexus. Without the understated blue shields, the populace would choke on Warp poison. Without the oxygen filtration systems, they would suffocate. Without generators and a strict energy regimen, all of this would fail. Nexus was a shining, seeming utopia, stifled by a poisoned atmosphere.