by Tim C Taylor
Plasma arced inside the tank, boiling the circulating fluid around the orange blob that was the Hummer’s core.
The tank exploded.
Steaming fluids sprayed over Dane’s headshield, joining the sticky mess of corpses and bloody debris on the floor.
Freed from the dead Hummer’s grip, the Far Reach team were released, slumping groaning to the floor, the creature that had held them now a wizened orange sponge twitching in its own juices.
Arun advanced on Dine-Alegg, but Springer beat him to it.
With Dine-Alegg adjusting the equipment that would imprint herself on the Ultra Janissaries waiting all over the planet, Springer dismounted and stalked around the outer edge of the room to get a firing angle at the two surviving Hardits.
Arun froze, not wishing to miss a millisecond of this scene about to play out. Because if Springer had walked around the force field with such ease, it clearly didn’t extend all the way to the wall.
Tawfiq saw her nemesis, and brandished her fists, revealing that her right ear had been severed by Dine-Alegg, who herself was too intent on the controls to notice.
“I don’t suppose you recognize me,” Springer told Tawfiq.
Finally, Dine-Alegg looked up, saw the threat, and went for her gun.
Springer blew the general’s head off with a burst from her carbine.
“You took away my name, and gave me a number,” Springer told the growling Hardit. “It wasn’t even unique to me. You just wiped the blood off the last Aux slave to die wearing that number. But I haven’t forgotten. I can never forget. Aux slave number 114 reporting for payback, Mistress Woomer-Calix.”
Tawfiq thumped her chest an instant before Springer opened up.
Her fire discipline was good, dart after dart was aimed perfectly through Tawfiq’s center of mass… and kept going to blow chunks out of the floor behind the supreme commander.
The darts refused to interact with her.
Tawfiq laughed, though the pain was clear in her strained grunts. She scrambled with difficulty to the lip of the viewpoint where Arun gave her a blast but with his lance that sailed through her into the air.
Tawfiq jumped.
It was 600 feet up, but Arun knew in his gut that this wasn’t suicide.
Springer balanced herself over the lip and sprayed the air with darts.
“Can’t see her,” she reported after ceasing fire. “She’s gone stealthy. Aelingir is here, though. She’s brought Marines, Wolves, even some Legion Hardits. Why the frakk did she do that, Arun? Arun? What are you doing?”
By the time she looked back, Dane had thrown Dine-Alegg into the room thick with Hardit corpses and stunned Far Reach Marines. In her place on the stone chair, she had sat her Queen of Battle.
A sense of destiny was slamming into Arun with brutal force. He detested what he intended to do next. But he was sure he had been born to this all along; he’d just never figured it out until now.
He had to take Tawfiq’s place before someone else did.
Dine-Alegg had readied the controls. All he had to do was use them.
He thought of himself. The way he looked. The things he had done and the people he’d loved. Dead and alive. He encapsulated all of this inside his essence and transmitted it through his scent emitter. Finally, came the words. “I am Arun McEwan of the Human Legion and Nest Hortez. I command you. I bind you to me.”
— Chapter 49 —
Arun McEwan
Top of the Victory Monument.
“Uhh, General McEwan, sir,” called a slightly breathless voice from the ramp, “you need to disable the signal barricader first.”
Scipio and his team had arrived. They wore just their gray under suits and were mostly carrying only side arms. “Beats me, General,” said Scipio who had his black broadsword in both hands. “I don’t know what that is either, but Dranjer knows what she’s talking about.”
“Marine Dranjer had the sense to extract that information from the Far Reach squad at ground level,” Kraevoi commented.
“It’s the size of an eyeball,” explained Dranjer. “Spherical and you’ll get a small electrical shock if you touch it.”
An eyeball! The hollowed-out space inside the pyramid had become a seriously crowded place with four Trog dragoon mounts and their riders, and the Far Reach Marine team struggling to come to. He counted at least a half dozen Janissary corpses but they were difficult to count as they were in so many parts. Then there was the Night Hummer in a litter of splinters and steaming fluids, and now Scipio’s team. This could take all day.
“Scipio,” he ordered, “assign one of your people to check the Far Reach team are okay – maybe try to bring one round to tell us where this damned barricade thing is.” He gestured to Hyper and Escandala who were on their butts rubbing their necks. “And another to check on… my children. The rest of you, on your hands and knees and start looking.”
“Roger that, General.” Scipio shot him a wink and then looked away quickly just in time for Arun’s view to fill with a very angry Springer, helmet off so he could get the full effect.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
“Them!” Arun pointed outside. From Tawfiq’s chair, he had a perfect view of the hundreds of thousands of Ultra Janissaries waiting to be commanded. And somewhere out there was Tawfiq.
In the grass to the north, Jotun-led Marine teams were setting up a fearsome line of fire power. Legion aircraft were keeping the skies clear. But even if Aelingir and Grace could withstand the overwhelming Hardit numbers here in the mall, there were millions more around the world ready to waken. Human screams reached his ears from the city. They were quickly shut off.
This wasn’t over yet.
“It’s not the right approach,” snapped Springer. “Even if it were, I know it shouldn’t be you.”
She stormed off to check on their children, leaving him to stew in her words.
If not him, who? Maybe Escandala? She had a strong scent identity, and unwavering loyalty. Better her than the first Hardit to tap into the imprint mechanism of the waiting armies.
Someone must have switched off the signal barricader, because Arun’s HUD sprang into life.
The tactical updates, com requests, and vast ocean of BattleNet data were too overwhelming to take in. But Arun was never alone. He had Barney, who summarized the status in a few whispered messages and allowed only one voice transmission through.
“Karypsic Actual to… Father! What the frakk’s going on?”
Hardit stink hit Arun from the equipment pointing at him on the table. “We’re okay, Grace. We’ve taken the tower, but Tawfiq escaped. Stay alert.”
“Understood. I have bombing solutions for the Janissaries I see in the mall. I can’t dust them all, but the sooner I start, the more damage I’ll do.”
Barney couldn’t translate the pheromone signal that now issued from the broadcast equipment, but it seemed a surefire guess that it was announcing it was now ready to transmit.
“Move away from that equipment, McEwan! Now!”
It was Romulus!
What the hell…? It didn’t matter. Arun didn’t listen to traitors, and however Romulus had appeared out of nowhere, it only proved the situation was so fluid that Arun had to seize his moment while he could.
He leaned forward and spoke into the equipment. “My name is–”
“I’ll kill her!” screamed Romulus. “Say another word and I’ll slice her pretty neck. Her scales are tough, but are they tough enough for a Mark 2 knife? I don’t think so.”
Arun twisted around upon a nightmare scene. Romulus was lifting Springer up onto her heels with his blade cutting a crimson line into her neck, a knife that was covered in the blood of another victim. Blood still dripped from scaled arms that disappeared into nothingness. His head and shoulders thrust into the real world, the light of madness in his eyes, but of his legs and lower torso there was no sign.
Arun told himself to keep calm. “If you hurt her, you’ll
never get out of here,” he told the traitor, but as he spoke doubts crept in. Between Scipio and the dragoon mounts, it was true Romulus would never get as far as the ramp down, but part of him wasn’t in the room. Perhaps he was in some kind of portal and could reappear in another location out of reach?
But Romulus laughed at him, and the sound chilled Arun to his core because it carried the manic edge of someone who had lost all hope.
Scipio drew his sword.
Romulus pulled back on the knife. Just an inch, but Springer was straining her neck, her head tilted back. Even so, still the knife was cutting deeply enough that the blood ran freely down her neck.
Scipio froze.
“I don’t expect to get away,” said Romulus. He added darkly, “Nor do I deserve to. But I do want you to listen, Arun McEwan. Destroy the equipment. I’ve been Tawfiq’s plaything for years. Nothing good can come from her, and those waiting Janissaries are her creation. Nothing good can come of them either. Destroy the equipment!”
“I can’t let it fall into the wrong hands,” said Arun, trying to hold back on the anger welling up inside. The veck was already hurting Springer, but if he cut her badly…
“Destroy the equipment or I destroy her.”
“Even if I did what you ask, someone will build their own and take control for themselves.”
“Not before you kill them all.” Romulus laughed. “You’re too soft, McEwan. You have cannons and aircraft and ships. Even a nest of Trogs, I hear. Kill them before they spring to life. Seek out the underground Janissary looms and murder them before they are born. You’re right to fear another taking Tawfiq’s place. Clock’s ticking, McEwan. Destroy the equipment and start the killing. Now! They’re only Janissaries. They deserve to die. Every last one throughout the galaxy, and it needs to start here. Today.”
Arun remembered the way Shocles and Wokmar had come alive when he’d given them a new sense of purpose. He pictured one stomping on the foot of the other as they bickered and grumbled, just the same as the people he’d grown up and spent his life with.
“No,” Arun said calmly. “Hardits are not monsters. Those altered Janissaries out there are still innocents. If we murder them, we’re no better than Tawfiq. Besides, there’s a New Order fleet skulking in the outer system. And I’ve got a feeling that when the White Knight Emperor learns the identity of the woman whose life is in your hands, he’s going to be mightily pissed off. We need to demonstrate adamantine strength to him.”
In reply, Romulus jerked Springer backward. “Believe it or not, McEwan, I’m trying to do the right thing here. It’s all I have left. I’ve nothing to lose. So believe me when I tell you this is your very last chance. You move away and you…” He nodded at one of Scipio’s Marines. You know how to set up and fire a GX-cannon?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s one half-assembled by the west viewport. When McEwan is out the way, you finish setting it up and shoot the broadcast equipment on that table into oblivion. Make a sudden move or point the cannon my way and I’m dead. But she dies with me.”
“Okay!” Arun shouted. “We’ll do it.” He gave Scipio’s Marine a searching look and felt a flood of relief when the man gave him a simple nod as if to say not planning any tricks here.
If Romulus had threatened anyone else, Arun would have hardened his heart and gone ahead with the imprinting. He’d meant every word he said, but now that he had been tested, he knew he would sacrifice everything to save Springer.
As Dane plucked him from the seat and walked him away, Arun went cold with shock to realize he wasn’t so very different from the traitor. Romulus had betrayed everything and sided with the devil herself in order to save Janna. That had to have been the threat Tawfiq held over the younger man. Arun would have done the same for Springer.
Suddenly, disembodied hands reached out of the nothingness behind Romulus and grabbed the knife. Romulus held on, but the sudden attack gave just enough of an opening for Springer to slam the back of her head into his nose with an audible crack.
Blood gushing from his face, Romulus lashed out with a kick to his assailant’s shins that won a cry of pain from her, but when he followed up with an elbow strike seeking the vulnerable points on her head, Sashala Kraevoi easily dodged his attack. She slipped around his side to emerge with Springer safely inside the pyramid room.
By the time Romulus had recovered his balance, Scipio had his strange black sword to Romulus’s own scaly neck, with several armed Marines to back him up. Not that he needed them. He flicked his sword point, scoring a dripping red line across Romulus’s neck.
“Is there any reason to keep this traitor alive?” Scipio asked.
“Only for his trial,” Arun replied. He noticed some of the Far Reach Marines begin to sit up and take notice of the surroundings.
“Does he deserve one?” Scipio questioned.
Arun stared into his face. Romulus looked as if he would welcome a final release. It might be a kindness to spare him a drawn-out legal process and end him here. But not this way. Not with the anger he heard in Scipio’s voice.
“He will pay for his crimes,” Arun said, “for they are far too great to ignore. But Tawfiq forced him to choose between his duty and the person he loved most in life. Are you so sure you would have acted differently if Tawfiq had forced the same choice upon you, Lance?”
Scipio glanced at Sashala and turned white. He lowered his sword a little.
One of the Far Reach Marines rose to a kneeling position and pointed to the west viewport. “What the hell is she doing?”
Springer had taken Arun’s place on the stone chair. “You were right about the Ultra Janissaries, Arun,” she said. “Except for one thing. It needs to be me.”
She looked into the recording equipment and cleared her throat to speak.
— Chapter 50 —
Springer
Victory Monument
“You don’t have to do it,” Arun was pleading.
She shook her head, releasing drops of her blood onto the chair. “You’ve carried enough burdens, Arun. Any more and you’ll crack like Indiya. And I don’t want this burden on my Nest children. No, it has to be me.”
“But… our future. Slipping away together to leave all this behind…” His words faltered. Not because they were so hypocritical – dear Arun never saw his own failings – but because he knew they were a lie. The universe hadn’t finished making demands on them. It never would.
“My wonderful Arun, we did have our time together. Back in Celtic Elstow. And it was beautiful.”
“No, let me–”
“Shut up, Arun. This is hard enough.”
She allowed herself a sigh for the lost future that had never really been theirs, and projected the essence of her Nest identity through the emitter in her chest. “My name is Phaedra Springer Tremayne. Know my image, scent, and name. No one shall command you unless it be on my authority.”
A mistimed jumble of her words was flung back at the tower from speakers throughout the mall. Springer’s image superimposed upon the giant statue of Tawfiq facing her from the far side of the reflecting pool. Human on Hardit – it made for an awkward mix.
The blank Janissaries in front of her swayed.
It was a reaction of sorts, but was this going to work?
Of course it will, dear, chimed Saraswati. You say the words and I’ll translate into scents they understand. So long as you stay clear of higher level mathematics and romantic poetry for now, we’ll be fine.
“Face me,” she commanded, trying to visualize her intention and project through her scent transmitter.
They did.
Hundreds of thousands of Ultra Janissaries turned about and looked up at the tower, awaiting her command.
Just two words and the response had been immediate. She couldn’t deny there was a dark side of her that relished the feeling.
And that’s why that useless boyfriend of yours must never taste such power. You know he could never handle i
t.
Please pipe down, Saraswati. Like I told Arun, this is difficult enough as it is.
The cuts in her neck were now a burning line of pain, but she had something to say that couldn’t wait. “You were conceived in hate, but you are born in dignity. Your lives will be respectful and respected. But first you have a task. Find the one known as Tawfiq Woomer-Calix. The two-eyed tyrant. Seize her and bring her to the statue carved in her image. Then you will march out into the city and separate those who wish violence upon each other. Humans and Hardits. Humans and other humans. None shall war upon each other today.”
The Janissaries looked up at her, unblinking. Unmoving. Had they understood any of her orders?
Go! she thought. Do it! Execute!
They kicked into motion.
With each passing moment, she learned more of the awakening beings, and they of her. Although they looked identical from her position in the chair, it was clear that they were predisposed to hierarchy, the better to carry out her orders. Officers for want of a better name – she didn’t want to impose on them the same military strictures she had experienced growing up – began organizing teams to search the area by sight, scent, and touch.
The scent from so many of these new beings, each an individual eager to explore their relationship with her, was overpowering. The responsibility more than she could handle. It wasn’t just unconditional obedience they gave her, but trust too. They were babies. Never mind that they were infants stuffed with muscles, bodies designed to withstand severe trauma, and a working knowledge of military tactics, they still depended on her. She knew then that she would never call them Janissaries. They deserved a better name, but that would have to wait.
Behind her in the tower room, the humans went about their business. Romulus was pleading that he was the Voice of the Resistance and should be spared. Arun and Dane were right behind her chair, her lover silent and closed, but her Trog Nest sibling offering her gentle scents of support. Bwilt and Leon were soothing their wounded riders, and Scipio was talking anxiously about the Legion officer on her way to make contact. And the pounding in her heart was not slowing. Her hands shook.