Tragedy: Act Five, Scene Twelve

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Act Five, Scene Twelve

Wham! Wham! Wham!

Brickslayer was in her right hand, her armor’s unfolded railgun pointed at the door.

Then... nothing happened. There was silence.

She turned back to the console. She still had a few more orders to give, and before long the lifts would be moving, the robots coming, and she’d let them know where they were needed. There was easy room for the armor to move; back before Steelmind’s powers had manifested the Tyrant had wanted banks of pilots and so there was a long clear walkway between the two lines of control stations along both side walls wide enough for the Tyrant’s Durendal to walk freely along even when all the stations were fully manned, easily enough room for Catherine.

… Catherine wished she’d thought to bring some kind of mine to put under the door… should she dispatch more of the robots to the city, or have them focus on securing -

The left wall of the room exploded, the blast sending clouds of debris gouting into the air. Metal fragments pattered against Catherine’s armor, deflected off the walls, cracked the display screens. Her shoulder lasers fired into the cloud, but could do nothing to make out a target.

The armor emerged at a run, a halberd in its hands as it lunged for her. It must have been painted by a skilled artist, perhaps one of Livia’s perfetti - the lightning bolt was perfectly aligned, a precise copy of the original symbol in the Tyrant’s books of heraldry - and yet Catherine had seen teenagers with spray cans do better. The armor was Steelstorm Industries’ top-of-the-line model, but no Durendal.

Her shoulder lasers flashed and its chestplate glowed red, its surface molten, as (adrenaline flooding her system) she turned and caught the axe-blade with Brickslayer. The armor flew backwards but Century was coming out of the cloud, too, and the lasers switched targets to cut him down.

- Morgan came through the front door with her spear levied and fired a forcebolt from the tip as she solidified to draw breath and it smashed into Catherine’s right shoulder and one laser went out. Catherine lunged for her and Morgan went back through the wall, but the armor was into the room and past her, firing shots from a blaster on its left palm that Catherine’s armor deflected, and as the left-shoulder laser targeted it it dropped behind a console on the far side of the room from Morgan.

“Princess Catherine,” rolled out from behind the console. “I will accept your surrender, if you choose to give it.”

“Imposter,” Catherine said as the smoke cleared. They had her surrounded and one of her best weapons was down. This was not ideal.

“I am Ilderia.”

“You’re really not.”

Did she have a targeting solution on Nicator? She did not, which meant that it was time to put Nicator between her and the rest of the knights. She rushed forwards and turned to face the armor behind the console, swung with Brickslayer, axe-blade whistling down sharp. “Both because of how you’re a bad imposter, and because of how Ilderia doesn’t exist.”

Nicator erupted out from behind the console’s cover and caught the blow on her own halberd, not as a straight-on parry that might snap her halberd in half but deflecting the hit to crash into the console in a shower of sparks. Catherine wrenched it free and turned to keep her enemies all on one side of her but by that time Century was storming back through the hole in the wall in vast numbers, and her shoulder laser was trying to fire at him as much as at Nicator. “Ilderia,” Catherine went on, “has never existed. Ilderia is a bad coping mechanism!” She barreled through Nicator and Nicator stepped aside, Century and Morgan behind her.

“You know Helen would be reacting to this, right?” Catherine called out.

“Don’t call her that!” Century snapped, throwing a grenade before his nearest body dropped. It landed on the far side of Catherine, the explosion washing over her.

“Funny how you said that not her,” Catherine said as Nicator took cut after cut at her, dancing aside from Catherine’s slashes and returning her own. They left marks, scarring the paint job and denting the metal, but nothing more. Enough hits would add up. If there were enough.

“I don’t need to defend myself,” Nicator said. Catherine’s bones rattled with the force of blows dealt and received, her armor filtering and amplifying the words to be audible through the din. “I have friends for that.”

“You need to defend your lies,” Catherine said, her lasers flashing out past Nicator to target Century. “Because you’re pretending to be my sister, and I knew her longer than you did.”

Nicator’s face was hidden behind her helmet as halberd flashed against pollaxe. Nicator’s armor had a fraction of the strength the Durendal did, but however much training Catherine had Nicator’s speed and agility were vastly superior to hers and all the little blows built up. “My sister was a linguist who liked fencing and Renaissance art and she thought about throwing herself off a cliff and decided to die doing something about the world’s problems instead.”

She heard a deep intake of breath from her left and in an old, old reflex jerked the butt of her polearm back just as Morgan fired. The remaining laser cut out as Morgan’s blast hit it but the butt of Brickslayer hit Morgan’s breastplate a glancing blow, and the plate broke and she went backwards, sprawling unconscious against a wall.

“- and it just so happened that she took ten thousand people with her, because all the good intentions in the world don’t matter if you screw up once.” Catherine glared at Century, now amassing his forces behind Nicator. Nothing left to cut down his numbers, and he was even bringing some of his tinker-armed bodies in. “Anything to add to that, Century?”

He said nothing.

“Anything to add to that, Imposter?”

“My men know who I am.”

“Then why don’t you?” Catherine snarled. “We grew up together. Do you think you’ve never heard of me? There’s two of you left, Century. There used to be twelve.”

“For Ilderia,” said Century slowly.

Nicator lunged and the blade’s point slammed into Catherine’s armor, leaving a crack in the metal. Catherine swung Brickslayer down and knocked the halberd from Nicator’s hands, then counterattacked, Bricklayer’s whirling head smashing consoles and filling the room with smoke and hissing clouds of steam.

“For what I have always fought for,” Nicator said, stepping back as the blow went past.

“Ilderia said she fought for justice, but Bloody Lizzy’s dead! My father’s dead! Livia’s dead! All Ilderia’s enemies are already dead.”

“And there’s no justice yet,” Nicator said.

“Not while you’re still wearing her face, no,” Catherine spat out. She advanced, pollaxe in hand. “Tell me, Nicator, what was your real face?”

Nicator withdrew and snapped her fingers; a bolt of lightning arced from them and struck the crack, dissipating into the still-functional absorption shield.

“Ilderia can’t make lightning bolts without a source of power,” Catherine told Century. “Century. Think. Would Zero lie to you?”

“Grenade,” Nicator said, and one Century’s eyes flashed to Morgan and every other Century shot her in the back simultaneously.

Nicator fell forwards as the lightning arced again, passing through all of Century’s bodies in the room and Catherine brought her axe-blade down in a single overwhelming blow. Incredibly Nicator deflected it as she fell, knocking Brickslayer aside with a blade from her gauntlet and then rolling and coming up -

“Who are you really?” Catherine asked.

“I am Ilderia.” No emotion in the words.

“No, you’re really not.” Catherine kept moving but Nicator knocked the blow aside again (her wrist-blade snapping from the force) then rushed past her and scooped up the halberd. Her armor was smoking and cracked where Century’s blast had hit her, covered in cracks and dents from all the blows she’d half-deflected, but Cortana’s lasers were down and Catherine didn’t know how many blows it could take...

“I am the second Ilderia.” The two faced each other a short distance apart, each tensed and waiting for the other to move.

“Ah, the good old-fashioned ‘rename yourself to pass lie detector tests’ trick,” Catherine said,, raising her left hand. The palm blaster would -

Nicator was fast, fast enough that Catherine couldn’t get her hand back on Brickslayer quickly enough to parry and the sudden blow landed another crack in Cortana’s chestplate. “I am the second Ilderia,” she said. “I am the superior Ilderia.” Nicator was faster and Catherine could knock aside her blows and aim her own but Nicator was almost precognitive - “The first Ilderia could never have done what I have -”

“The first Ilderia got ten thousand people killed through impatience -” Catherine parried the next blow with Brickslayer’s head, swept a blow with the shaft to Nicator’s armor, cracked her right thigh-plate - “and your crater is hundreds of thousands if not millions, plus the survivors of the people Ilderia loved. Do you even know what she was fighting for?”

Nicator parried the next blow, then lunged for her shoulder and Catherine’s right arm went limp. Damn it - “I know what I fight for.”

“Empty words, Nicator! You know Century’s got spare bodies across half a dozen continents, right? He knows what you did. You can’t shut him up. You’re not Ilderia to the people who mattered to Ilderia.”

“Why are you talking.”

Catherine raised her left arm and blasted Nicator across the room, her armor broken and crackling, plates of metal hanging off, circuitry exposed and smoking and Catherine could see that the armor wasn’t functioning, but Nicator somehow dodged the next bolt and - lifting the nonfunctional armor by sheer force of arms - charged with the tip of the halberd lowered, charged -

- dropped into a crouch at the last moment of the charge, shifting her center of mass three feet down to let the forcebolt go over her head and swept Catherine to the ground, then with overwhelming strength landed a blow on the left arm -

The servos gave out. Too bad.

“At this point? To get you to leave. If you start running and never stop you might survive. I’m not here to kill you, I’m here to save Novapest. The robots are already coming for you. No force on earth can turn them off. Escape them and Century will kill you. Escape him and You cannot win.“

“I can,” said Nicator, in the cracked ruins of her armor. “I have. I walk the path that leads to triumph. My last enemy is broken at my feet.” With inhuman strength she lifted her halberd and then the light flashed and her head jerked back and she fell, crashing into the floor in a shower of metal scraps.

“Damn you,” said Patience.

She lowered the laser, walked up to Nicator’s body, and fired into it, time and time again.

“You killed my mother,” she said accusingly, through tears. Kicked the body. “You killed my mother, Nicator! Give her back!”

“Patience,” said Catherine. “Patience.” She tried to rise, stepped towards her, her arms heavy.

“It’s over. We won.”

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