Hesset leaned close and whispered, “I have the algorithm; it will not be long until the locks begin to fall.”
“Keep watching, Eru; we’ll be through in a few moments and then it begins. I may be able to stop her if you release those locks.”
Toa smiled into his camera and said, “I believe the term humans use for this sort of thing is ‘bluff,’ is it not?”
“Are you willing to bet your life on it? If you want to live, open that hatch right now and maybe I can talk her down.”
Toa moved closer to his display screen and said in a firm, confident tone, “Your threat is hollow, Norris, and we both know that. The door is nearly a meter thick; even your psychotic companion, with all her fearsome power, cannot breach it.”
Norris frowned into the display, knowing Toa was watching from across the compound.
“It’s a matter of time before we find the codes, so I’m giving you one last chance to save your skin. Open the goddamn door!”
Toa was unmoved.
“Perhaps you didn’t know, but your destruction of the communications tower closed a constant link to my associates. When that channel went dark, it became a signal for them to come and investigate. We will wait until they arrive, but I assure you, the mercenary detachment they will bring is far greater than the token force you just defeated.”
“I’m giving you the chance to live, Eru, but the offer has a time limit.”
“I am sorry, Norris, but you have gone as far as I will allow you to go.”
Norris shook his head and chuckled.
“Qural and Doctor Kol send their regards, Eru.”
Hesset waited as the search program completed its system query to reveal nine unique code sequences Toa believed to be safely hidden. Each would require manual input and she began, tapping in the sequence for the first lock. It was slow going, but there were no system refusal alerts and the sequence’s alphanumeric code returned a flashing confirmation in the display. At once, unseen plates from the first lock slid inward with a clunk. Norris looked at once toward the display where Toa searched frantically for an override, but it was too late; Hesset was already loading the second lock sequence and when it fell, Rantara smiled upward to the camera and said, “Thank you, my love. Theriani is going to deal with Marelle’s problem while I’m finishing up here. Remember, after I’m in, close the door immediately and lock it out.”
“Understood,” Norris replied as the third and fourth locks gave way.
Theriani disappeared, but Norris knew why. Toa’s attention remained fixed on Rantara and he called out from the display.
“What is she playing at? Your Khorran female has run out of ammunition—I saw her cast off her weapon.”
Norris said nothing.
“I know you can hear me, Norris! Call her back and we can negotiate a settlement; this doesn’t need to end in further bloodshed.”
Still Norris remained silent, but Toa’s voice had become shrill and desperate.
“What do you hope to achieve by sending the Khorran to her death? My soldiers will burn her to ashes the moment she enters the chamber! Is this human bravery, borne on the back of another?”
“Keep watching,” said Norris evenly, “or you’ll miss the best part when the last lock comes down.”
Toa continued to search for an override, flipping furiously through menu after menu on his display as the panic began to mount.
“Give this up, Norris, she has no weapons! Your Khorran female will be dead in seconds if you don’t listen to reason, I implore you. We can reach agreement and prevent more violence!”
Hesset moved ever faster after discovering duplicate code segments common to each sequence and in seconds, the remaining five locks clanked in measured time until the big door hissed and thundered on its rollers as it moved inward. Norris switched the camera view to the vast chamber’s interior where Rantara stood in the yawning entryway, surveying the sloped surface below. Even in the dim light, they saw it was littered with computer consoles and transfer nodes, like oversized analogs of their own Transceptor. Hidden within, the Kez’Erel waited, ignoring the panicked Merchant technicians as they searched desperately for a place to hide. The Kez held their fire and Norris guessed correctly their hesitance was only an unwillingness to betray their position among the array machines until the last second. Hesset nodded and flicked another code sequence into her console and the massive door rumbled as it closed behind her once more. Norris smiled at what he knew would follow; she was in.
“You’re not talking your way out of this, Eru,” Norris said at last. “I gave you the chance to release those locks, but you insisted on doing it the hard way. Watch her now—she’s about to expose your mistake.”
“Mistake? Perhaps this is inherent in human behavior, but I’m afraid you’ve overestimated her chances.”
Toa’s bravado, Norris knew, was the product of desperation and fear.
“Look at your panel, Toa. Now that we have the codes, access from your end has been closed out. They can’t escape and you’re an observer now.”
“They will kill her, Norris! Are you mad? Open it!”
“I will…eventually.”
“What game is this? Release the locks!”
“Not yet.”
Toa’s agitation and fear had become painful.
“Even if your Khorran survives, you’ll never get through the layers of denial protocols waiting inside each array, yet you persist? Tell me what you want!”
“No.”
“Norris!”
“You had the chance, Toa; now it’s too late. Oh, and just so you know, I have what I need to get into the storage array; one of your former employees helped us out with that. My Khorran female is going to murder these filthy bastards and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Toa stared from the display.
“Settis.”
“Yes,” Norris smiled, “and he sends his regards as well.”
“This is insane!” Toa snarled again; “You have trapped her inside the chamber with ten of them!”
Norris leveled his gaze into the display.
“She’s not trapped inside with them,” he said slowly; “they’re trapped inside with her.”
“You’re a madman! Release the locks!”
Norris leaned close to the console and frowned dramatically.
“If you’re faint of heart, you might want to look away when she begins; this will become a bloody mess. Oh, and one more thing, Toa; my other female, a tiny Revallan bundle of death is on her way and she’s coming for you. Run, Eru—run while you still can.”
In the dim light, they saw through the cameras only blurred shadows and movement. The glittering, green threads of light were strangely absent and it was clear the Kez’Erel particle weapons had been rendered useless by an unseen force none of them could understand. Soon, screams of agony pierced the silence as Rantara found each Kez’Erel soldier. The horrible sounds of tissue torn apart and blood splashing out from dismembered Kez bodies became unbearable until at last, Hesset pleaded with Norris to switch off the audio.
She strolled through the chamber like a patron browsing in a boutique, moving calmly and methodically until every mercenary was driven from its hiding place. With nowhere to run and denied the lethal power of their guns, the Kez soldiers could only delay the inevitable. Through the cameras, Norris and Hesset watched them scurry in desperation like a herd of cattle, suddenly aware of a slaughterhouse’s intent. Two of them made a brave try at attacking her, baring fearsome mandibles like serrated scissors protruding from a thick, skin covering, but their movement was slow and clumsy. She deflected the advance with little effort, grasping a bony carapace protecting a creature’s shoulder area to pull it free in a single, swift stroke. In another second, the rigid plate had become a weapon she brought down quickly, severing the head of the second attacking mercenary. Again, foul smelling blood poured from the shredded remnants of the creature’s thorax.
The panicked Merc
hants, clambering awkwardly over consoles in a final bid for freedom died instantly by a flick or two of her wrist. She swept their limp corpses effortlessly from her path with a toe, like wet towels on a bathroom floor. Norris looked on with a chilling, detached fascination Hesset couldn’t help but notice, yet she understood and said nothing. The carnage seemed endless and Rantara waded through the remaining mercenaries, holding each struggling, writhing body with one hand as she pulled away entire sections or legs with the other. They couldn’t see the remorseless, fixed expression she wore when the last Kez’Erel soldier gasped out its dying breath, but finally—mercifully—it was done.
Norris and Hesset watched her wander through the space between the array’s computers, watching for movement from the lifeless bodies and shaking blood from her hands until she paused at the giant door and looked upward to the camera. Norris nodded and tapped the control that released the locks and it rolled open a final time. Rantara moved quickly to the lift and they met her with a thermal blanket to sop up the mess covering her armor. She said nothing and Hesset looked at once to Norris, but there was little that needed to be said.
They never doubted her strength, but seeing its true power first-hand was a sobering, terrifying experience and Norris looked at her with a new, nearly reverent fascination. It was the one place he never went—the frightening, dark corner of Rantara’s nature she worked deliberately to hide, especially from him. The emotionless killing machine was always there, but unleashed in a strange and dangerous place, there was nothing to mask a savagery like no other. As she eased down from the adrenalin-fueled rush of battle, Rantara felt his eyes follow her. He paused for a moment and smiled to let her know he was with her no matter what and she understood without being told. They moved quickly, but across the compound, another desperate scene was about to unfold.
At the end of a long tunnel toward the east, Toa was moving. The images when Rantara began her attack were more than he could bear and his only hope for survival lay beyond the compound in a sub-level shuttle bay he maintained only for himself. With those information orbs he could carry in a sack, he scuttled along the tunnel, looking behind him with nearly every step; he knew what Theriani would do and he meant to deny her the chance. There would be time to rebuild the archives later, he reassured himself, if only to keep the terror at a distance while he made his escape. Toa had never experienced fear at its most primal level and it pushed him ever faster. The tunnel was well-lit, bringing a sensation of relief when a door into the launch bay came suddenly into view. Despite the human’s best efforts, Toa felt his spirits rise in the knowledge he would survive after all.
Inside the bay, he rushed to his shuttle pod and brought its engines to life while he scrambled aboard, ignoring the safety harnesses until he positioned himself quickly at the controls. At his touch, the machine lifted slightly before easing into the open where the hillside fell slowly away to a long, barren valley. He aimed the pod northward and sat back firmly against the powerful forces that would push him when the shuttle’s drive engines ignited, unconcerned with an odd, shimmering effect in the air above.
The pod accelerated on its climb and Toa felt an intense surge of anger, forced to run from his own facility as he pulled the safety harnesses around his frail torso. There would be consequences the human and his friends would face one day, he decided. As he reached to input the course commands, the pod’s proximity alarm blared out its warning as a dark shape materialized out of the twilight haze. Moving instinctively, he veered the pod left, but it was too late when the first blob of plasma slammed into the little machine’s right flank, hurtling it violently into a flat spin. Working furiously to compensate, Toa looked on in helpless terror as the cold, rocky surface rushed up to meet him in a thunderous clatter that left him stunned and dazed by the sudden impact.
He sat in the silence of the pod where it nosed into the hillside. The pod’s windscreen was fractured and a harsh, cold breeze swirled in as he freed himself from the cutting pull of his harness. After struggling mightily with the hatch, Toa tumbled onto the hard-packed dirt, hurrying to right himself. He was unhurt, but confusion and fear began to overtake him as he surveyed the damage; the pod was finished and he was exposed with no other way to escape. At last, he heard it; the buzz of lift engines winding down from behind.
He spun around to see the hulking shape of a Khorran assault ship hovering only a dozen meters from him, menacing and black where it settled onto the surface. Toa watched with terrified anticipation as a hatch opened to reveal the Revallan female moving quickly toward him. It was useless to run and Toa’s fear had reached a crescendo as he trembled in his place; without a weapon, he was helpless.
“Wait!” he shouted, but still she came on, crossing the distance between them in seconds. Before he could speak again, she leaped for the slender stalk of his neck, pulling him violently to the ground in a grip he had no hope of breaking. As he gasped for air, he heard her speak calmly into a comm unit.
“Eru Toa trying, but not the way out for him,” she said. “I not let him free.”
He heard a voice answer through the Revallan’s communicator.
“Hold him there, Theriani—do not kill him.”
“I will stay with, only,” she replied. “This one will stay, too.”
Toa struggled against Theriani’s grip for a time, but it was useless. Banen stepped down from the ship and walked quickly to Theriani. In the nagging conflict that sometimes troubles all healers in the places of war or battle, he looked on, knowing what Toa would face when Rantara arrived. There was nothing he could do for the frail Searcher, and to his own surprise, he felt little compulsion to try. After a moment, Toa spoke.
“Please! Release me and I will make it very much worth your while.”
Theriani scowled and looked closely at him.
“What you try to do to Darrien so long ago, it now will be your turn, maybe!”
“You don’t understand,” Toa pleaded; “we can help each other if you’ll just listen!”
“No more to listen, Toa; this the thing you make for yourself.”
“I don’t know what they told you,” Toa continued in desperation, “but I assure you it’s not as it seems! We wanted only to borrow Norris’ thoughts—we never meant to…”
“Saying all you want, but not to me!” Theriani shouted suddenly. “You will stay very quiet now, understand?”
Before he could protest further, a shape appeared from beyond the compound to the east as a Khorran shuttle slowed and landed softly beside them. Toa felt the grip of terror renew as Rantara stepped slowly from the machine, her armor still dripping with the blood of a dozen Kez’Erel soldiers. Behind her, Norris and Hesset followed quickly as silence returned to the hillside. She knelt down, leaning in very close until her face was only millimeters from his.
“Hello, Pod Elder,” she said softly, “I am Darrien’s Khorran female.”
The horror Toa felt was clear in his eyes as they darted from side to side. Gone was the arrogant and authoritative tone, replaced in the end by a speechless tremble. Norris watched her; he’d been there, too, helpless before her power and the reminder was unsettling. In spite of all Toa once conspired to do, Norris could only look on with memories of the moments when Rantara arrived in Banen’s cave on that first, terrible night. It was an odd sensation, he decided, watching another in what was surely the final moments of life, yet he remained silent. Rantara smiled, just for a second and then the coldness in her voice returned.
“You should’ve run when Darrien gave you the chance.”
“Please,” he gasped.
She looked on the way Besh had when Norris was fastened tightly into an interrogation chair. There was no emotional outburst or display of fury; the calm in her face was disturbing and she leaned closer still to whisper at the side of his head.
“He didn’t deserve what you wanted to do, Toa. Darrien was lost and alone, yet all you could think to do was sell him like a herd animal to the high
est bidder. The one I love with all my soul was nothing more to you than a simple commodity.”
“You don’t understand!” he gasped.
“Oh, but I do,” she answered coolly. “I know others who wanted the same—my own people—and when I find them, they’ll die screaming, too. But there’s more, isn’t there? Your disappointment with his escape seventeen years ago was too much for you to bear, so you took your revenge by destroying the life of an innocent girl. You took from her all that she was, uncaring for the result and the fault for that final, stupid act is yours alone.”
“I have them!” he shouted. “The memories from Embree’s sister—I can give them to you!”
Rantara smiled and said, “Thank you, but they’re already mine; I don’t need your help.”
The desperation in Toa’s voice had become a siren of terror—his last, futile attempt at salvation—but Rantara was unmoved by the pitiful display.
“I want you to know we have the codes to your library, Toa; we have access to your private archives, too. Marelle Embree’s identity will be returned to her in a few days, but before you die, I want you to know we’re going to download them completely, and then we are going to blast your archives out of existence. Soon, I will hunt down your associates, one by one; I will find and kill them all. You, the other Merchants and this place will be wiped from history.”
He looked at her and for a moment, he seemed to see and accept at last what they all knew would happen. She grasped his slender head with both hands, standing quickly. He cried out from the pain as she shifted her grip to his lower torso and dragged him by thin, struggling legs a few meters away from the others. At last, in a single, terrible motion, she swung him over her head and downward like a person desperate to extinguish a grass fire with a blanket. When it impacted the hard surface, Toa’s head exploded, spraying dark, orange blood and lumps of his brain in a swath across the dirt. Her face showed no emotion as she repeated the act twice more, relenting only when his shredded body came apart in her hands.
As the others turned for the short walk to their idling ship, Norris looked at Rantara for a moment. Did she regard it as mere justice, he wondered, or was it something even less? Vengeance, he knew, did not always arrive as it was intended, but Rantara seemed disinterested, moving on to the next task without a thought. He smiled and said, “Clever girl.”
Echoes of Esharam Page 18