Reap the Whirlwind

Then a chilling, primal noise wailed from the sky. It was part roar, part droning howl—the hunting cry of a leviathan.

From every direction, the predatory shadows closed in, gaining speed with every meter of ground McLellan and Tan Bao covered. Then a blast of fire rent a new gash in the jungle ahead of her, and she realized that the leviathan and the shadows were one and the same.

Icy wind slashed through the humid jungle air, gusting into Vanessa Theriault’s face. A tentacle of shimmering liquid snaked out of the trees ahead of her and rushed in her direction. She froze for the space of a breath, mesmerized as the dark fluid sparkled with motes of power. Then Niwara tackled her to the ground as the appendage struck like a viper.

It blurred past them and split the trunk of an ancient jungle tree. In the millisecond before impact, the tentacle’s tip had sharpened to a swordlike point and transformed into a razor-edged blade of gleaming obsidian.

The tentacle ripped free of the tree, leaving behind a crystalline residue in the wound, like a scar of black glass.

Niwara and Theriault scrambled to their feet and resumed ru

Stands of trees to either side of her and Niwara were uprooted and blithely tossed skyward, enabling Theriault to see that the tendrils all originated in the storm cloud overhead. Flashes of lightning struck in tandem with more descending tendrils of jet-black liquid. This was not like the fearsome black golem that had assaulted the teams on Erilon; this was something of an entirely different order—larger, more versatile, and more powerful.

Liquefying vapors turned into stoneglass daggers and jabbed from multiple directions. Theriault sidestepped one, dodged another, somersaulted over a third. Tumbling back to her feet, she saw Niwara pivot clear of a deadly thrust. As Niwara sprinted toward Theriault, another tentacle raced up behind the Caitian woman. Pointing, Theriault cried, “Look out!”

Niwara hurled herself to the ground, and the saw-toothed blade grazed her golden mane before burying itself into the muddy ground. The Caitian rolled clear and backpedaled toward Theriault. “Keep going!” she shouted, drawing her phaser and laying down covering fire. She turned around when she reached Theriault, slapped her back, and started sprinting as fast as her broad paws could carry her. Theriault paced the longer-legged scout by virtue of sheer terror.

Shadows were tearing the jungle to pieces, and it was only a matter of time before she and Niwara ran out of room to run.

Eerie wails echoed across a coal-colored sky. Keening bellows of bloodlust, atonal and resonant, resounded off nearby hills, and there was nothing but the pandemonium of thunder and the searing fury of lightning ripping the jungle asunder.

Chaotic frequencies and shockingly strong electrical fields buffeted Celerasayna zh’Firro’s ante

There was no place she could hide from its psychic onslaught. All she could do was run.

Liquid knives arced out of the darkness and tested her reflexes. She outran one strike and weaved left past another. An abrupt halt spared her from an uppercut that would have decapitated her. Razka tugged her arm and yanked her clear of a stab in the back. Two of the tentacles collided and shattered each other in a flare of indigo flames.

They emerged into a wide-open clearing of sheared-off tree stumps and charred, smoking ground. Above, the ebon cloud loomed over the jungle, a Colossus with hundreds of fluidic limbs seeking out its prey. It was like the darkest passages of the Codices come to life—a physical incarnation of Chaerazaelos, the eternal storm of torments that awaited those who dared to appear unWhole before Uzaveh the Infinite. Zh’Firro stood in the open, staring slack-jawed at what she took to be the embodiment of a

A scaly hand slapped her face. The stinging warmth of the hit registered and raised her ire. Then she saw Razka standing in front of her. “Snap out of it, sir! Start ru

One moment Captain Nassir and Sorak zigzagged at a full run through the claustrophobically close jungle forest, evading lethally agile tentacles lunging out of every shadow, and the next they stumbled clear of the tree line onto a broad, open slope that overlooked a lush terrain of steep, rolling hills. In the sky a few kilometers distant Nassir saw the edge of the massive storm cloud that lurked overhead and, beyond it, clear sky.

Behind them, a dozen serpentine coils were smashing through the forest and were about to overtake them.

“End of the line,” he said to Sorak, pulling off his pack. As he reached inside for the decoy, he said to the Vulcan, “Prep the dampener.”

He was grateful that Xiong and his team on Vanguard had simplified the use of the decoy. With so little time to deploy it, the less Nassir needed to remember, the better. Rain pelted the sphere in his hands. He engaged its autopropulsion module and pointed it in the direction he wanted it to go. Then he pressed the button under his index finger.

The device leaped from his hands and shot away into the sky, quickly becoming little more than a speck sailing over and beyond the crest of the next hill, speeding away toward the horizon. “Activate the dampener,” he said. Sorak switched on his device. Nassir snapped, “Hit the deck!”

He and Sorak dropped to the ground as the tentacles erupted from the trees and raced over them—and continued into the distance, chasing after the still-flying decoy. Nassir gave silent thanks to Xiong and his cadre of scientists, pulled his communicator from his belt, and flipped it open. With the press of a single switch he sent a triple beep to the rest of the landing party. That would be their cue to release their decoys and activate their signal dampeners.

He just hoped that the rest of the landing party was still alive to receive the order.

McLellan and Tan Bao flailed clumsily with their packs as they ran, their bodies able to do two things at once with speed but not with grace. She fumbled the decoy, which bobbled inside the pack with every ru

As soon as her hand gripped the fist-sized device, she let her pack fall away in the mud behind her. Tan Bao did likewise as he pulled the dampener free.

Flashes of lightning to her left gave McLellan enough light to find the controls of the decoy. One touch was enough to arm its propulsion circuit. Another would send it on its way. It was only another five meters to a narrow break in the canopy cover.

An impact against the back of her knee was so swift and the cut so clean that she didn’t realize what had happened until the lower portion of her right leg fell away and she pitched forward onto her face. She fumbled the decoy, which rolled ahead of her and sank halfway into the mud.

Then the pain hit. Cold fire coursed through her leg. She looked down and saw the crystalline residue spreading over her wound, a scab of glass. The tentacle that had severed her leg reared up, momentarily a vapor as it coiled to strike.

The dampener, fully activated, rolled to a stop beside her, and the tentacle wavered, as if it had lost track of its prey. Then it steadied and fixed itself on a new target: Tan Bao. The medic dived toward the decoy, reaching for it with one hand while brandishing his phaser in the other. He slid across the muddy ground as the tentacle snapped forward. His hand closed on the decoy, and he fired his phaser at full power into the jungle canopy. The tentacle liquefied and solidified on target for his heart. He dropped his phaser, lifted the decoy, and activated its propulsion circuit.