Page 65 of Blightfall

“Come on,” she said, moving ahead of me up the dark stairwell, lit only by dim floor lights.

The landing at the top of the stairs opened into a large room with no lighting at all. We waited, but I didn’t hear any movement or voices.

“I think it’s clear,” I said.

“Clear!” Naga agreed.

Alanik turned on her light-line, and we inspected the room in the red-orange glow.

It was an armory. An array of swords, electric spears, and light weapons hung on racks along the wall. I moved immediately to one of the swords—it looked even bigger close up—and reached for it.

“Is this necessary research?” Alanik asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Absolutely necessary.”

I picked up the sword, which was lighter than I expected. It gleamed in the red wash of the light-line, and I held it upright, like one of the knights of old. Swords were terrible weapons—I’d rather have a pistol or a rifle in a real fight—but there was something majestic about it, something at once lethal and awe-inspiring.

“Coming to any conclusions?” Alanik asked, watching me with an amused expression. Okay, maybe I wasn’t being the most responsible flightleader right now, but also I was holding a sword.

“Tell me you don’t want to try it,” I said.

“I’d rather try this one,” she said, lifting the hilt of a laser sword off the wall. That one would light up the room, potentially drawing more attention. But…

“I don’t hear any varvax coming,” I said. “When are you going to get another shot?”

She looked like she wanted to argue, but then turned on the sword, the laser glowing blue.

Stars, she looked hot holding that thing.

Alanik turned it off a moment later and put it back on the rack. “We should keep moving,” she said. “I think the gate is above us.”

My eyes lingered on the sword in my hands. “Do you think we could take one?”

“I think someone on the street might notice you lugging around a weapon from their sacred games.”

She wasn’t wrong. The thing was half as tall as I was. It wasn’t going to fit in my pack.

“We could use an illusion to cover it,” I said.

“Arturo,” Alanik said. “What are you going to do with a sword that is worth that risk?”

I sighed. She was right. I wouldn’t take one of these into battle. It would only be a trophy. I consoled myself by grabbing the laser sword and tucking it into my pack beside Naga. Maybe the DDF could use that kind of technology. It didn’t seem so different from our light-lines, and though I wouldn’t steal from potential human allies, I had no qualms about stealing from varvax.

Alanik moved to the door on the far side of the armory, which led to a multilevel stairwell. We went up, angling, I thought, toward the mysterious gate to Elysium.

In a large open room, we found it: The iron supports of the back side of the gate stretched from floor to ceiling to our right. There was a winch on this side, and a switch to lift the gate, in addition to several large machines and drums full of liquid—probably the machines to create the eerie smoke.

To our left, the room recessed back about twenty meters, ending in a wall covered in scribbled lines, like someone held a pencil at varying heights while running back and forth along it. I stared at the wall, pieces clicking together in my mind.

“That’s why they don’t have much security down here,” I said. “They’re hiding inside a nowhere portal.”

I’d seen portals before—one on Detritus, and another on the kitsen planet. When we hyperjumped, we slipped in and out of the delvers’ strange dimension, but if we wanted to stay, we had to enter through a portal. The portals could be locked from the inside, so if the varvax hid behind it, security for these basement corridors was unnecessary. No one but a cytonic could slip in or out without their permission.

“The varvax took Timon into the nowhere,” I said, “so Elysium could be anywhere. They’ve been abducting humans and transferring them somewhere. Maybe this really is where the Superiority was getting their human bodyguards.”

“It doesn’t make sense, though,” Alanik said. “The games are about training to fight aliens. Why train your slaves to hate you?”

She was right, but I didn’t know how to reconcile it.