“All this time these idiots have been targeting our main weapons batteries.”
Sandra spent some time watching him then shook her head. Gunners in the royal fleet were expected to fire ten volleys in seventeen seconds with at least ninety per cent hitting the target.
Don Krushinka claimed that the dons’ gunners could fire off ten volleys in ten seconds with the same efficiency, but Yv went beyond this level of intensity by at least twice as much, and perhaps even more so. In any event, she did not have time to catch sight of the markers moving from one target to another, just flashes, flashes, and more flashes...
The battleship shivered again. This time although the strikes were more frequent, they were not so concentrated. Yv leaned back in his seat and shook his fists in the air.
“That’s life...” he sighed. “Now these boys will calculate where my little sentry guns are and wipe them out.” He peered closely at the lights flashing on the screen indicating damage and muttered. “Maybe not all of them ...” When more boarding craft appeared on the screen, Yv gleefully rubbed his hands together and shouted cheerfully. “I fooled them again! I disconnected around forty sentry gun turrets,” he explained in response to the surprised looks. “These boys are good to go, so now we will repeat the dance!”
Lights started flashing on the screen again. Tera, who had all this time been sitting silently at the main desk, suddenly stood up, and limping slightly, walked toward the exit door. Sandra watched her go anxiously, but Tera’s straight back expressed such adamant defiance that Sandra resisted the impulse to question her.
Don Krushinka’s mustachioed face appeared on the screen. “Sandra, try to last out for another forty minutes.”
She nodded. At this point, the battleship began to shake again from direct impacts. Sandra glanced at Yv. He moved away from the console, threw a satisfied glance at the screen which was almost completely clear of flashes from boarding crafts, and rubbed the palms of his hands together, as if he was symbolically washing his hands clean.
“Well, there’s nothing left to shoot with, but we can still fight.”
Don Krushinka turned his head and gave Yv a searching look, but he looked serene as the enemy ships came closer. The admiral nodded and hung up. Sandra turned to Yv and caught his eye. Her eyes pointed at Tera’s empty chair, then she jerked her head toward the door. Yv nodded his head, stretched his back, and growled complacently. “Any chance of a cup of coffee for the hero?”
Sandra stared at him, but he just grinned.
“Don’t worry, Admiral, I knocked out all their boarding craft. Now, if they want to throw a boarding party at us, they will need to bring their fat bodies in closer...” He closed his eyes like a cat that had just supped a bowl of sour cream. “Meanwhile, I have time for a coffee.” Yv calmly took a small cup, which he had swiped from one of the officers, and, sipping it, noted with slight regret, “These coffins are unlikely to come closer than four miles in. If we had a couple of hundred dons, we could meet them beyond the power frame and thin them out with plasma blasters.”
Sandra nearly snapped, but then bit her tongue. The Space Marines had been taught never to fire plasma blasters in a vacuum, because the first volley could scatter them throughout the cosmos. Yv finished his coffee, and carefully put down the cup. He got up, checked out his sword and dagger from their sheaths, and slowly moved toward the door.
He managed to get to his shuttle craft and pull on his combat suit, which he had rashly left behind there. Who would have thought that the flagship would have to fight off an attack by a boarding party? Now he needed to go down sixteen levels. Yv walked on slowly, thinking about the new abilities he had found within himself today. Mostly, what he had managed to achieve today was down to the abilities that he had already discovered before, except for one.
He had spotted the approaching monster ships before the battleship’s sensors had, and when they appeared on screen, still sheltered behind a reflection field, he already knew what lay beyond those fields. Yv sighed and picked up his pace. He heard voices around the next turn and stumbled upon a group of Space Marines who stood as if someone had ordered them to stand at ease. Yv smiled and knew that he had arrived.
Tera caught the hilt of her sword comfortably and stepped forward awkwardly, wincing from the pain in her hip. The therapeutic artificial skin neutralized the constant aching from the wounds effectively, but she still had to be careful when moving around. A sergeant, standing on a corner, started, and stared dumbfounded at something behind her in the corridor. A moment later, Tera realized what had surprised the sergeant so much when Yv appeared from around a bend in the corridor loudly clicking the heels of his boots. Tera felt her heart leap for joy but gave no sign of it. The Space Marines quickly closed ranks around her, puzzled about and staring menacingly at the unexpected visitor.
Few knew that there was a don on the ship. He had arrived just before the start of the battle, and the flagship captain had made certain that no one was able to overhear their conversation on the way to the control room.
Tera greeted him with a nod and said softly. “Don’t worry, this is the dons’ liaison officer.”
The Space Marines relaxed a little, but the looks that they awarded to their visitor testified eloquently to what they thought about having men on board, especially during a combat mission.
However, they had no time to discuss the matter. There was a hissing sound from the onboard speakers, then Sandra’s dry voice quickly began to inform them of the places where the hull had been breached. Among the coordinates mentioned was a breach two compartments away from them.
The lieutenant commanding the Space Marines held her gaze on Tera for an instant, as if asking for permission or waiting for orders, but Tera silently closed the visor on her combat helmet and moved toward the breach. Yv sighed. He had waited for at least some kind of sign, but Tera, as in the control room, remained cool and detached. He turned and walked behind a tall woman six steps behind Tera. When they came to the specified area the compartment door suddenly collapsed with a crash and trolls rushed through the open doorway.
Yv well remembered his first meeting with trolls. It almost ended sadly, but then there were experienced swordsmen beside him.
Here, he was on his own. The first three girls were hacked down on the spot.
The others, however, had time to prepare and met the enemy sword on sword. One troll, rushing forward, fell upon the lieutenant’s sword but managed to slash its scimitar through her cuirass and into her combat suit. The kelimit blade cut through the metal, but the blow struck by the dying creature was not entirely true, and the multilayer substrate of the suit remained intact.
The lieutenant threw off the corpse and looked at the damaged cuirass in stunned amazement. The next second another troll arose before her and slashed its scimitar across her throat. Her head fell to the deck and rolled under the feet of the dazed Space Marines, and for a few seconds her body remained swaying on its feet, splashing fountains of blood through the stump of her neck then collapsed in front of the fighters’ feet.
Yv realized that things were not going well. Gritting his teeth, he slipped into the accelerated perception mode that he had already become accustomed to, roared, and jumped forward. The trolls turned to face the enemy that had appeared before them, ready to tear him to pieces, but Yv did not give them any chance.
He ducked under the swinging scimitars and cut down the nearest troll. As it began to fall to the deck, he managed to dodge another blade directed at his chest, quickly moved forward, and immediately ripped open another one, then he lunged forward and pinned yet another to the bulkhead, and with the return movement of the sword he slashed through another ugly face. After that Yv jumped back and looked around. As he expected, such zeal displayed by a man strongly inspired the fighting women of the kingdom, and the fight was more or less equal.
Moving slowly, at least for him, through the web of flashing blades, Yv pushed his way towards Tera. Just at that m
oment, Tera, moving awkwardly on her injured leg, nearly fell. A scimitar blade slid along the blade of her sword, and almost went into her arm, but Yv’s dagger managed to intercept it. Tera glanced in surprise at the deflected scimitar, but then she instantly dispatched the no less surprised troll. Yv fell in behind her, occasionally averting attacks with his dagger but not particularly being involved in the fray.
On the open communications channel, cacophony reigned, occasionally overlapped by the deep and husky voice of the commander of the battleship’s Space Marines, who was in command of the reserves. It looked like everybody was fighting to the last man, so they seemed to be better off than many others.
With his help, Tera had managed to secure the left side of the corridor. Even when the compartment door was blown by explosive charges, regularly spitting in new groups of trolls, they lacked the intelligence to wait until the groups had gathered together so that they could pounce all at the same time, because in this fight they outnumbered the marines almost three to one. Tera had already recovered, her initial confusion had passed, and beside Yv, another three were protecting her. The shock of the first attack had gone and smiles even started to show on the faces of the girls.
There was a grating noise in the neighboring compartment then came a massive shockwave. Yv understood what was going on and shuddered. The second wave of boarding parties had reached the battleship. These were Kazgarot.
Don Krushinka wiped his sweaty forehead. The battle was going well, apart from the battle near the flagship, but even there he expected things to end well. The assault ships were in position, and the corvettes held in reserve were ready with their boarding craft, waiting for the assault ships to finish with the monster ships. It was time to prepare the attack on Outpost. He quickly pressed a few buttons, switching to the squadron commanders.
“Hey, guys, start to withdraw the ships of the landing parties to their starting positions.”
They nodded in turn, then Old Fart asked. “How’s Tera?”
Don Krushinka nervously shook his head and muttered. “OK by God’s grace...”
The don looked into his eyes momentarily, seeing them filled with pain and fear, then disconnected. Don Krushinka reached forward, intending to contact Admirals Shantorin and Germain, but then Stubborn Bulls face appeared on the screen wearing a combat helmet, and drenched with green troll’s blood. Seeing the look in his eyes, Don Krushinka turned cold.
“Admiral,” he said in a strained voice. “The flagship of the second wave has been breached ...” He hesitated. “There are four times more Kazgarot than there were at Karrash.”
The old Don stared at the screen with unseeing eyes, still refusing to believe Stubborn Bull’s report. One Kazgarot was enough to take out half the entire crew on a corvette. During the attack on Karrash they hammered the dons before they fell under the blows of axes with kelimit blades. There were about fifty of them, but here ... And now they roamed the corridors and halls of the flagship. He frantically turned away and switched to full-duplex channel. The communication channel opened but not immediately. Then came an image from the battleship’s control room, and a second later the whole screen was filled with the snarling snout of a Kazgarot.
6
Cleaver stopped before the door and looked up at the arch of a doorway covered in kelimit inscriptions. It was the Wall of Grief. Here were the names of all the Powerful Ones who had died since the Primordial Exile. All three hundred of them. Cleaver looked around. He had never before been in the Hall of Exile, as, indeed, had no one else of his generation.
For millennia, the Powerful Ones had not collected together for an Aala. Cleaver sighed, and his wings and ears involuntarily adopted a posture of extreme deference.
In the worlds belonging to the Powerful Ones nothing had been created by intelligent beings that was older than the Halls of Exile. Once again, he looked around at the exterior walls, created by ancient generations of ancestors, but like everything done by the hand of the Powerful Ones, it was of an unimaginably beautiful form, and he stepped inside.
There was a roughly made, stone bench with a rear cavity hacked into the back to accommodate the lower ends of the wings and steps that ran down to the stone circle containing the Well of Truth. At the far end of the area, a stone portal bore an image of the Exile.
Cleaver had seen this often in the halls of the Powerful Ones on different worlds, but now he was in the hall from which they were all copied. The stones in the hall smelled of great antiquity, and this seemed like a real portal, although all the Powerful Ones knew that the World of Exile was located several thousand light years away. Remembering the World of Exile, Cleaver shuddered involuntarily. Only once in the life of each generation were they allowed to visit the World of Exile, and it was no one’s fault that they discovered the surface of this world swarming with another intelligent species.
“Welcome, Cleaver.”
Cleaver turned and adopted the posture of a polite greeting. Harmony stood before him in a posture of respectful greeting. Cleaver hastily slightly parted the ends of his wing claws, noting that Harmony was aware of a change in his status of trust.
Since he was the only one from his team to bring his ship back from the system of the World of Exile, he had been brought before the Scarlet Aala. He then feared new accusations, but the battle had not been led by him and records showed that if he had been involved in the fight, having information that could have been known from the start, or if he had tried to follow the example of the Menacing Ones then in any case, his ship would still be there.
So, it was decided that he had assessed the situation correctly, and the names of the rest of his unit took up the bottom lines on the Wall of Grief of the Powerful Ones. Meanwhile, Harmony adopted a submissive posture to meet the desire of the one he wished to talk with. Cleaver looked back. There was plenty of time until the Aala started and only a few figures wandered around the Hall of Exile. They looked like first-timers like himself. So, he adopted a posture of favorable attention and addressed Harmony directly.
“So, are you also involved in the Aala?”
Harmony adopted a posture of polite denial. “No, I, along with my fellow brothers represent the Penetrators.”
Cleaver unfolded his wing claws and slightly parted his elbows in a posture of polite interest. He knew that the creation of the Penetrators required a lot of creative work, but in the end, hadn’t the Purple Trapeze been dealing with this for hundreds of thousands of years, and even up to recently had he not done exactly the same ? Whatever it was, the topic was not worthy of a separate discussion. Harmony stood by, modestly recognizing Cleaver’s higher status and waited until he addressed him.
“Is it possible that you are aware of more detail as to why the major Aala was declared?”
Harmony unfolded his ears in a posture of consent.
“There are several reasons, but the main one is that the line of reality has jumped too far from the line of analysis.”
Cleaver repeated his posture of consent. “I heard that the mismatch is more than a hundred points?”
“Yes. The mere fact of joint actions with the dominant social structures of different sexes led off the line of reality by forty points.” He paused and adopting the posture of polite fears, he added. “The Lawmakers are worried that there may be more to come.”
Cleaver spread his elbow and knee claws in a posture of bewilderment. “I can understand the concern of the Purple and the Scarlet Ones, but why a full Aala?”
Cleaver lifted his shoulders in a posture of derision.
“I heard that the Orange Ones fear rebellion on other worlds, because of the large losses among all the slave castes. and the Turquoise Ones are expecting losses among the Powerful Ones pertaining to this. So, all four castes desired to hold an Aala.”
Cleaver adopted a posture of reflection.
“So, is the likelihood of unrest in the slave castes great?”
Harmony adopted the posture of assumption.
>
“Probably not. Put simply, the Orange caste, as always, has overreacted. Anyway, today you, unlike me, will hear their message first hand.”
The Hall of Exile gradually filled with the Powerful Ones. Harmony and Cleaver stood next to each other for some time, pondering on what had been said, then Cleaver adopted a posture of polite regret about the upcoming parting, and after the posture of response, he was shown to his seat.
The ritual of the major Aala was very much like the ritual of the Scarlet Aala, especially as the opening was conducted by the oldest from among the generations of the ancient Scarlet Trapezium. However, when the roulade started, everyone sang. When invited to sit down, Cleaver sat on a stone bench, neatly placed his wings in the cavity behind him, and, adopting the posture of attention, leaned his body forward to better see what was happening in the Circle of Truth. The first speech was given by an Ancient Orange One to the Aala. He went into the middle of the hall and raised his wings above his head in a ritual posture, recognizing the authority of the Aala, and asked in the traditional manner. “Is it permitted for me to speak?”
The Ancient One from Scarlet Trapezium who had opened the Aala answered loudly in the affirmative as was the traditional manner.
When the Ancient One from the Orange Trapezium finished speaking before the Aala, a deathly silence hung over the hall. His message was a bombshell. He accepted that the decision several turns ago to suspend the war had proven to be wrong. Returning to their native worlds, the members of the slave caste had brought back new revelations of heresy with them.
The conquest of the last few races had been almost bloodless, and the scarlet waves of Wildlings had never raised their heads. Hundreds, and in some worlds even thousands, tens of thousands of generations had lived in a familiar world, in which the lower castes did the fighting, the Useful Ones labored, and the Privileged Ones honed sharpness of thought and proudly carried the banner of creativity.
Each caste was able to do one thing and taught not to encroach on the rights and obligations of any of the other castes, and only the Powerful Ones were capable of doing everything, which is why they were known as the Powerful Ones.
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