Father Desmond Crane's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Desmond ran until the ridge fell away and the ground cracked open into a second cavern he did not know. He took it because the wastes above lay flat and bare and the light was failing. He went in fast, spear low, shard warm at his ribs. The passage narrowed, then narrowed again. He turned a corner and his hand met stone. A wall. No slot, no gap, no seam. He backed up and swept the walls with his palms and found only rock. Then he heard them behind him. Two sets of boots, then a third, moving without hurry now, because they knew. He had left a trail in the sand and they had followed it, and the pool trick did not work twice. He set his back to the dead-end wall and lowered the spear. His hands shook. He made them stop. The first scout came around the bend with its weapon raised, purple plates catching what light there was, antenna twitching above its helm. Desmond did not wait. He drove the spear into the gap under its jaw where the armor thinned, and the shaft went in and the scout dropped. The second was already firing. A bolt burned across Desmond's shoulder and he felt the coat scorch. He tore the spear free and swung the butt into the second scout's knee and it buckled. He put the point through its throat before it could click a warning to the third. The last one came in low, hands out, no weapon drawn, reaching for his coat, reaching for the shard. Desmond let it come. He stepped inside its arms and drove the spear up under the chest plate with both hands and his weight behind it. The scout folded around the shaft. Its black eyes held him a moment. Then it slid down the spear and lay still. Desmond stood in the dead-end with three bodies at his boots and his breath loud in his ears. His shoulder bled. His hands would not stop shaking. He knelt beside the last scout and pulled a small square panel from its belt, cracked at one corner, humming faintly under his thumb. He put it in his coat next to the shard. Then he wiped the spear on the scout's leg, stepped over the bodies, and walked back the way he had come. The wastes were dark now. The workbench was still hours off. He had killed three of them, and more would come for what he carried, and he had one more piece for the wings.