There was a horrible whistling noise screaming past his helmet. Sweet, sweet air. Cold enough to hurt his teeth and so thin it was barely there, but it was still air.
There were small shadows beneath him, and they quickly grew into Imperium airships. There were black puffs of smoke as they fired upward at the Traveler. Surely he was too small of a target to have been noticed, but that didn’t make him any less comfortable flying between the shells. He went through the smoke. It was tempting to steer himself right through one of those warships, but a man had to know his limitations, and he didn’t know if he could go that dense.
He was past the screen of ships so fast that they’d probably never even known he’d been there at all. Shanghai was close enough he could pick out individual neighborhoods. Gravity’s center changed to the Imperium Section. A few seconds later and he picked out the rectangle of the main compound, then the green square of the parade ground in front of their palace.
The speed was so great that he was worried if he lifted his arms away from his torso they might get ripped off. He let go of three or four extra gravities of pull and immediately began bleeding speed. He got his arms up, one armored finger running across the back of his other hand. The rune was already prepared. If this worked, Captain Southunder would receive his voice loud and clear. It came from his mind more than his vocal cords. “I’m almost there. Turn Fuller’s machine on!” He hoped that would go through, but there wasn’t time to mess around if it didn’t. Sullivan switched hands and went to the rune on the other side. Now this one had to work, or he was screwed.
The ground was rushing up to meet him and he had just set the world air-speed record. It was time to throw the brakes on. Sure, folks jumped out of airplanes using parachutes, but he was a Gravity Spiker. What did he need with a parachute? Sullivan was positive his trajectory would take him directly into the Imperial courtyard. The moving sea of colors down around the green square was people. The place was packed with bodies. Good. The more witnesses the better.
He changed gravity’s direction. Now instead of pulling him toward Shanghai, it was coming from above. He imagined that the Traveler was the new center of the world, but he was gentle, just one gravity at first, and then another, and another. Timing was everything. As his momentum died off, he slowed. Not too slow, though, because he really didn’t want the Imperium army to take up skeet shooting, and if they hadn’t seen him yet, they were bound to soon.
He was still going a couple hundred miles an hour when he felt he was in range to activate the second spell. There was a matching rune engraved into the inside of his helmet, right in front of his mouth. Fuller had come up with this one, basing it on the magic of a Babel he had once met. It had worked fine when they’d tested it, but he hadn’t been flying through the air at the time.
Dr. Wells had simply pointed out what they’d always known. To the Imperium, the Grimnoir were the bad guys. They were the Imperium’s boogeyman. In every piece of propaganda, the Grimnoir were evil incarnate. It seemed so obvious, but then Wells had asked, why would you ever take a villain at his word? In what possible way would the Iron Guard ever believe a warning from the Grimnoir about the real Enemy?
By telling them something so easy to believe that they wouldn’t even stop to question it.
It was time to play the villain.
Please, dear God, let this work.
Sullivan ran his finger across the rune and activated the spell.
First Shadow Guard Hayate watched the duel with increasing unease.
Iron Guard Commander Goto stood next to him at the window. “Hah! This is excellent. The Chairman is taking that traitor apart.”
Hayate tended to stroke his chin while thinking, a habit he’d picked up long ago. “Have you ever seen Iron Guard Toru in a fight before?”
“He is no Iron Guard!” the commander roared. “How dare you?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Hayate said soothingly. It would not do to have to get himself into a duel because he’d hurt some blustery Iron Guard’s tender feelings, not that he would have been in any danger of losing, because Hayate would simply cheat and have the man poisoned first. “My apologies… I have seen the traitor in combat before. In comparison, he seems off today.”
“He is probably just overwhelmed with shame, as he should be, there in the magnificent presence of his father!”
He was not sure, and Toru’s words kept running through his mind. The Grimnoir were capable adversaries, but they were few in number. Why would they throw away so very many of their warriors in an assassination attempt against a man they had repeatedly been shown was immortal? Such a waste of resources was not like them. He had enough respect for his longtime opponents to know they had to have logical reasons. Had Toru somehow convinced them of this delusions, and if so, how?
Hayate was surprised at himself. Truly, the Chairman was correct. Toru’s words were poison.
A soldier ran into the room to give a report to the Iron Guard. “Sir, we just lost contact with Zuiryu. Other ships report seeing a large explosion at its last position.”
“What!” The control room sprang to life. This was dire news indeed. There had only been four of the death-ray-equipped Kaga-class vessels built so far, and they’d already lost one last year. The Auspicious Dragon was the most capable vessel in the entire region. “Was it attacked by that unidentified dirigible?”
“We do not know, sir. Telescopes confirm that the dirigible is still up there at an extreme altitude. The Navy has launched one of their experimental demon interceptors to deal with it.”
Curious. Hayate glanced back out the window. The Chairman was still whipping Toru like the Brute was a disobedient puppy. He noticed a flash of reflected light in the air high above the grounds. There was an object falling. “There is something up in the sky.” He pointed.
The chief of the Tokubetsu Koto Keisatsu squinted. “Is it an aircraft?”
The Iron Guard, fuming about the potential loss of such a valuable vessel, turned to look. “It’s a bird.”
“No…” Hayate leaned forward. “I believe that is a man.”
Suddenly there was a great noise, a boom like thunder, so hard it rattled the windows. The crowd shifted, thousands looking upward as one. Even the Chairman paused in the administration of his beating and looked to the heavens.
A terrible voice came after the thunder.
“Attention Imperium. This is Jake Sullivan, knight of the Grimnoir.”
It was a fascinating magical effect. Hayate had clearly heard the words in Japanese, but since he could also speak Mandarin, Cantonese, English, French, Dutch, German, and Russian, it was as if he had heard it in all of those simultaneously. If he had spoken other languages, he had no doubt he would have understood it in those as well. Truly, that was a masterwork of spellbinding.
“Shoot him down!” Iron Guard Goto commanded. His men were scrambling. “Go! Movers prepare to deflect incoming!”
“I’ve got a message for the warriors of Dark Ocean. The Pathfinder has returned.”
That was such an unexpected message that many of the Iron Guards temporarily froze in place, shocked. It was not often they heard those names invoked.
The shape in the sky was getting closer, gleaming metallic in the sun. It was clearly man shaped. “Your Imperium schools have been infiltrated. Its monsters are hiding among you right now!”