Him winning, him triumphing over the Host and the Clayors.
The Host, even in his new form, wasn't a match for him, but Ryden lacked the powers it possessed. After all that they'd learned about the hive mind during the last weeks, he still couldn't be entirely sure that the Host didn't have anything up its sleeve. There was always the looming danger that it had hid something from its opponents. Always the possibility that it would trick him.
But it already did, Ryden thought.
It had made him forget. It wasn't important that Ryden win, it was important that the Host died.
He had been holding back. It was not a mistake he planned to repeat.
It didn't surprise Ryden one bit when the bridge reported that the Clayor ship had breached the Conqueror. The Host would have had no trouble distracting the gunners long enough to find a landing deck. That was the problem with vessels the size of the flagship. Smaller craft were almost impossible to prevent touching down. There was simply too much ground to cover and protect.
Usually it wasn't a problem. Anyone who wanted to attack the Conqueror with a ship that small was clinically suicidal. Right now, they had an enemy crazy enough to try that.
Ryden hadn't tried very hard to try and stop the Host from reaching the flagship. It was taking command of the ship that he was going to prevent.
Shooting an enemy down hadn't sat right with him, even if anyone could have been able to resist the Host's mind tricks.
No, it had to end with a fight between him and the Host. Ryden couldn't say how, but he knew that with absolute certainty. Like he'd known about Aria, even if thinking about her was difficult right then. She was his gesha, his one and only, forever. Had the fates given him Aria for one glance before he died, or was she a sign that he'd survive the upcoming fight?
Was she a consolation or a prize?
Ryden felt himself grinning. Come what may, Aria was always a prize to him. The one he'd be willing to die for.
***
The first step on the Conqueror's deck was like coming home. Ryden allowed himself a quick dash of relief, mixed with sentiment, something a general only felt toward his ship. The Conqueror sang beneath his boots, humming, growling, aching to be released exactly like he was.
Ryden would have liked nothing better than to give in to that call, but he was done with letting his fierce temper get in the way of decision-making. All his commands had to be correct now.#p#分页标题#e#
"Report," he told the captain who'd come to greet the general.
The man fell into quick march alongside him. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryden saw his most trusted warriors join him, those he'd left aboard the flagship in case it needed to venture deeper into the system, ones he knew he could trust.
"The Host is here," the captain said quickly, the displeasure clear in his tone.
Ryden knew what he felt. As the commander of the army, the general himself was rarely on the bridge. It wasn't like him to lead from the safety of the Conqueror. Captain Hastien was the closest the ship had to a pilot, if that term even fit a vessel too large to pass more crowded areas of space. As much as Ryden loved the ship, Hastien was practically connected to it. Without actually being infused, it was the nearest thing to a symbiosis.
"I know," Ryden snarled. "It's better this all ends here."
The captain nodded grimly. He was a warrior too and his instinct was the same—a true victory was only the one where your own hand struck down the enemy.
"We have been trying to locate him," Hastien went on. "But it's been..."
"Difficult."
"More like impossible, General. The Host does not want to be found."
"Have you secured the bridge, the armory, the core?" Ryden went on, ignoring the last comment.
"Of course."
"What about my gesha?"
When Hastien didn't immediately answer and instead an embarrassed silence hung in the air, Ryden stopped so suddenly that the captain almost ran into him.
"Where is Aria?" Ryden growled, every syllable etched with threat. "If you let anything happen to her, I will personally strip you of your skin before I strip you of your rank."
Warriors around them tensed up, a few backing away. Hastien stayed in place. The valor squares on the captain's neck pulsed danger, danger, danger, but Hastien wasn't put in his position by accident. He looked Ryden straight in the eye, squared his shoulders and reported in a hollow voice.
"We have been unable and unwilling to determine her location, General. We know she is accompanied by Lieutenant Joya and her unit. They left your quarters before the Host arrived. Before they did, Joya broadcast a message across the ship, telling everyone to cover their tracks. We believe they went into hiding."
The air around Ryden was thick with anticipation as the general stared his captain down. Hastien waited without further comment, showing he was willing to accept whatever punishment Ryden deemed fit.
"If the Host had harmed her, we would already know," the general said at last.
Hastien almost visibly relaxed. Of course it was visible to Ryden, who could read the man's every emotion and guess most of his thoughts through the crystals still pulsing wildly on his neck.
"Should we track them, General?" Hastien asked.
It was madness to say no to that. Ryden felt his entire being rebel against itself. He'd known what it would do to him to find his fated, but like all the others, he couldn't have imagined the ferocity of the bind. Every nerve in his body was screaming to charge, hurt, kill anyone who threatened Aria, but none of those plans would have done her any good.
Some men—lesser men by Ryden's standards—had said that it was inconvenient for the recognizing to happen in the middle of a conflict, because it clouded the judgment of the man.
It was true. Ryden could sense the urge to respond with mindless violence so vividly it nearly burned, but he pushed it down. He wouldn't have changed anything about Aria or whatever followed the moment when he'd known she was his. The only thing he regretted was not being sure from the start.
Yet it took considerable willpower to shake his head.
"Negative, Captain," he said.
To the surprised look on Hastien's face, he sternly added, "To look for her now is to signal the Host. We don't know if it's after her, but we must not give it a reason. If we search, it will only make it easier for the Host to follow. The best chance we can give her is to not draw attention to her."
The captain nodded, understanding. Ryden wished that he could instill that confidence within himself as easily. To leave Aria like that was unthinkable, but he wasn't given another choice. In a way, being away from her gave him more freedom to fight without distraction in order to kill the Host.
It was a shallow comfort in the face of losing his new reason to live.
Ryden raised his gaze to the warriors gathered around him. He opened the com link to address all the warriors aboard through their crystals without alerting the Clayors.#p#分页标题#e#
"My brothers and sisters," he said, allowing his deep voice to carry across to every member of his crew. "The last battle of this war begins. It will end today. We must not, under any circumstances, let the enemy take control of the Conqueror. All of you have only one task now. Find the Host.
Try to delay it, drive it into a corner. Just like the Conqueror stands between the enemy and Ilotra, you must stand between the Host and the bridge. No matter the cost, the Clayor hive mind must die tonight."
His warriors saluted him as one, fist over heart, their war cry echoing across the halls. No one questioned him, and no one was afraid, because Ryden had told them the truth and that was all they needed. He purposely hadn't said anything about them killing the Host. They knew as well as the general did that no one but him stood a chance. Perhaps even he would fail.
Ryden had given them the truth he'd accepted for himself. It didn't matter who lived, as long as the hive mind did not.
They would do what had to be done, just like him. They were Brion.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Aria
Aria watched Joya and her unit listen to their commander.
She couldn't hear the words he spoke, because they were transmitted straight into the crystals, but she did see the effect it had. They all listened, alert, tense, trying to be sure not to lose a single word. The longer the general spoke, the more proudly the unit stood, with their backs straightened and the valor squares beaming on their necks.
Then Joya relayed Ryden's words to her and something snapped within Aria. She understood the meaning quite fine, but the implications were too horrible for her to consider. In the past few weeks she'd seen countless people die, and witnessed mangled corpses left behind by the hive mind, but all of a sudden the thought of death terrified her to the bone.
It made her shake like a leaf, refusing to even contemplate the idea, because it was personal. An old saying came to her. Something about a million deaths being nothing but a statistic while the death of one, seen up close, would tear a person apart.
Aria felt like it was literally happening to her. As if the mere idea of Ryden dying had the ability to tear her insides to shreds.
The general's message had been clear. The Host had to die, no matter who had to die with it. Aria knew enough about Brions to know that Ryden couldn't have led the army if he hadn't counted himself as well.
Her hands were shaking too, usually so steady and sure. She pressed them into fists, taking strength from the motion.