Swords Above the Stars

by Roman Zlotnikov

  During the startup of the engines, she had been the one sitting at the console, so she had been thrown against the frontal panoramic screen. Quickly looking around, he realized how the Kazgarot had smelled them.

  Inside there were many more Space Marines than he had left with Tera. It seemed that some surviving fighters had somehow ended up in the hangar and Tera had let them in, or perhaps she had even gone outside herself to search for any survivors nearby.

  He shook his head. How reckless!

  However, there was no time to waste. Yv grabbed Tera’s limp body and carried her outside, and then pulled out the rest of them. Getting out of the shuttle, he saw that Sandra had already returned to her senses and was sitting next to Tera, busily typing something into the medical monitor on her spacesuit.

  Turning to Yv, Sandra gave him a glare. “You should have been flogged in childhood,” she muttered and turned back to Tera.

  Yv looked around. Everyone that had come with him were already giving first aid to those suffering from shock. He estimated that they had ten minutes left. He grabbed a bunch of blasting charges from the shuttle, pulled out one and attached it to the gates of the landing bay. It was ridiculous to even imagine that after such a blow the damaged door mechanism could be opened.

  There was an explosion! Yv leaned out through the hole that he had made. A monster ship hung in space directly in front of them, no more than a couple of miles away. Yv shook his head, trying to determine where the corvette was, but could find no evidence of it. He tuned in to the corvette’s radio frequency.

  “This is Lucky calling Stubborn Bull.”

  The answer came back immediately.

  “Grey Moustache here. So, you are still alive, my young friend?”

  “Yes. Just about. The battleship will explode in eight minutes. Admiral Sandra has put the engines on overload. I request a direction vector. We have an exit in green sector. We are going to leave the battleship. Will you be able to pick us up?”

  This time Grey Moustache hesitated slightly.

  “The corvette is finished. All the survivors are crowded onto the boarding craft so tightly that there is no room to stick your finger in.” He paused, frowning, and suggested. “We can take you on the outer hull.”

  Yv thought for a moment, then replied. “I don’t see any alternative, give me the vector.”

  “Blue eight hundred.”

  Yv whistled. It was almost exactly on the opposite side of the battleship.

  “We are in green sector with almost no time left!”

  He looked around. Tera had regained consciousness and was looking at him. Sandra was too. Yv remembered that the communications channel in his helmet was configured so that everybody heard his whole conversation with Grey Moustache. Everything he wanted to suggest could be disapproved of by many, but if he had disabled it, who knew what would come into the minds of the frightened girls. He had no time to fix the problem in another way or to apologize.

  “Grey Moustache.”

  “I am here,” he responded immediately.

  “We will jump on a vector of three hundred. Try to cross our path and pick up everyone you can. We will be flying without indicator lights, because the fat boy from The Enemy is hanging in space about two miles away from us. Who knows what the reaction will be if it manages to identify us.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “About fifty, and half of those are without jetpacks.”

  Grey Moustache hesitated again. He knew that he could reach the trajectory in ten or twelve minutes. By the time all who had jumped would be around ten miles from the battleship, but the blast could reach many miles further. To collect all of them would mean burning up all of the fuel, and a ship without fuel was merely a communal coffin.

  “OK, let’s try,” he said finally.

  Then Tera’s calm voice sounded in Yv’s helmet.

  “No.”

  Yv whirled around.

  “What do you mean, no?”

  She stood up, leaning on Sandra’s arm.

  “We are not just going to jump into space, hoping that someone will survive ...” She walked to the doorway and pointed in the direction of the monster ship hanging beside them. “That is our aim.”

  Yv looked at her, stunned. Fifty Marines, many of them shell-shocked ... What a crazy idea! Then it slowly began to dawn on him. Tera turned to her subjects, who were looking at her in horror.

  “Think about it. Their boarding team is on here, and we know that their warriors are all from the lower castes. The other castes left behind will not be serious opponents in hand to hand combat.” She paused, so that everyone could comprehend her words, and then continued softly. “Obviously, there could still be some of the Lower Castes on board, but I hope that Don Lucky will help us to find a way to get us into the premises of the other castes, avoiding meeting with the remaining Lower castes. Besides, if we capture this ship then, Outpost can be considered ours.” She gestured towards the hole in the ship and finished triumphantly. “We will win this battle.”

  For a few moments there was silence, then Sandra rose heavily to her feet and slapped her gloves together.

  “Well, if anybody in this room is spoiling to be a hero, then you are already one of them, my girl, since you finished off two Kazgarot. As far as my Whiskered One told me, usually the ratio was not less than fifty to one the other way round.” She paused a moment, then asked. “So, is this your latest bright idea?”

  Tera nodded slowly.

  “Well,” smiled Sandra. “I think that your proposal is not likely to give us less chance of survival than any other option. However, let everyone decide for themselves.” Sandra looked around the hushed Space Marines and stepped to the breach. Holding her hands on the edge, she turned to Yv, grinned, and said. “As you like to say, the Eternal One would be impressed.”

  When the battleship exploded, they were about five hundred feet from the hull of The Enemy ship. Yv realized unexpectedly that he was absolutely calm. He knew that there were no trolls, no Kazgarot, nor anyone else there that might be a danger to them on board. It still felt unusual, but he was getting used to the new way that he felt within himself recently.

  Yv glanced at the Space Marines hanging nearby and tried to imagine how they must be feeling at this time. He had felt something similar himself when jumping onto the surface of Scorpion ships. It was a horrible feeling. Like you felt thousands of enemy eyes upon you, and all the ship’s guns were aimed directly at your forehead.

  Over time, this feeling dulled, but never disappeared completely, but these girls had never landed on an Enemy ship before. Yv turned again to the fast-approaching ship’s hull, and springing back his legs, he landed on the ship with his gravity hooks.

  He took a blasting charge from his shoulder harness, quickly placed it in position, and slid to one side, checking around him. There were no falling figures to be seen above his head, so everyone had already landed. Several hundred feet away silhouettes hastily clambered over the hull in his direction.

  The girls did not disappoint him, and the jump proved to be not as long as he had feared. He looked around at the stilled figures around the blasting charge and nodded. After a few seconds, the hull trembled underfoot, and fountains of water vapor poured out around Yv, instantly turning into snowflakes. It seemed that the pressure inside the ship’s compartment was higher than normal. Tera was the first to appear next to the hole and ducked inside.

  Yv, swearing, ran after her.

  They entered a huge corridor in which four Kazgarot could move freely. Tera was already at a bend in the corridor. Yv ran after her, pulling out his sword on the move. He still did not sense any danger, but who knew ...

  Beyond the bend was a fork from which a narrower corridor led further inside the ship. They ran down it for another two hundred feet and stopped up against a set of double doors. Yv felt some danger beyond the doors and held up a hand in warning.

  Sandra nodded.

  After
her signal two Marines quickly took off blasting charges and deftly fastened them against the doors. Although a substantial portion of the gas mixture filling the compartments had already erupted into space, there was enough left to turn the power of the blast upon them, so they all ran back a couple of dozen steps.

  There was an explosion. They all rushed into the resulting opening. The shock of the explosion had deafened several trolls who were trying to get back to their feet. Using calm and familiar movements Tera cut off the head of the one closest to her and ran on without stopping. The other girls instantly did away with the rest.

  After a few deserted corridors and dark intersections resembling gloomy metal caves, they stumbled upon another door, which depicted a sign that Yv was familiar with.

  “This is the symbol of the Useful Caste,” he said, stopping.

  Tera looked at him anxiously.

  “But you said that the ship was commanded by the caste of the Privileged Ones?”

  Yv grinned.

  “As a rule, the compartments are arranged concentrically by caste. The Lower Castes, then the Useful, so further on we will come across the Privileged Ones.”

  Tera looked at him for a long moment, and Yv felt that her lips curled into a kind of anxious and affectionate smile, but the next moment she turned and nodded to the girls who had been carrying the blasting charges. A roar came from down the corridor behind them.

  “It sounds like they have come to their senses,” Sandra murmured.

  Yv listened to his feelings. He did not feel anything like what he felt on the battleship when the Kazgarot wandered the neighboring corridors.

  Most likely, some trolls were now approaching them. There was another explosion. Everyone rushed to the newly made gap in the door. The corridors here bore no resemblance to those that they had seen before. They felt more human, one could say.

  Soft light poured from above, the ceiling was domed and displayed calm light blue tones, just like a real sky. Under his feet was something resembling a shaggy carpet. The girls looked a little surprised, even though all their thoughts were occupied by other matters. Sandra looked back several times, but there was no sound of pursuit, and catching up with Yv, she asked him. “Why are they keeping back?”

  Yv shrugged. In fact, he recalled that in the records of Saint Dagmar there was mention of something about the limitations in the relationship between castes.

  “Probably, they are forbidden to enter the grounds of the higher castes.”

  Sandra grinned.

  “Well, if that was enough to simply keep them out then it is unlikely the Red Assholes would build such a strong door ...” She looked around and said thoughtfully. “I wonder what would happen if they were to enter?”

  Everybody slowed down to walking pace. After some time, Tera turned to Sandra and said. “If they enter, we will be the last things on their minds. If I remember rightly, the Red Asses promote extreme antagonism between castes.”

  They slipped by a few intersections, and finally arrived at a low door, which also had some kind of symbol above it. This time, it was clear that this was a symbol for the caste of the Privileged Ones.

  The Space Marines had already put blasting charges in place on the doors, when what Tera was concerned about was confirmed. From somewhere far away, almost from the very doorway behind them, they heard a roar which was followed immediately by a desperate shriek filled with such horror that everybody shivered involuntarily.

  Another explosion followed, but the doorway remained intact. Sandra was the first to reach the doorway, and she ran the glove of her spacesuit over the scorched surface, and then smacked it angrily with her clenched fist.

  “Kelimit!”

  They could hear roars and screams approaching. Yv looked at the girls. They were looking around anxiously, and their eyes were filled with deadly fear. He looked at Tera.

  She looked back at him calmly, as if she knew for sure that he could save them and was just waiting for him to act. Yv stepped forward and leaned against the door. The layer of kelimit was beneath the surface layer, judging by the color and texture of the damaged layer of titanium. The blasting charges had melted the titanium layer in several places, but he could see no trace of damage to the kelimit.

  Yv traced a glove over the surface, then stepped back and drew his sword. Until now, he had not had an occasion to prove whether what the Creator had told him was true. In all the battles that they had gone through before, he had to fence when he was in accelerated perception mode because he was too fast for his opponents, and even to protect Tera he had only needed to use a dagger.

  He only used his sword to kill.

  Now the moment of truth had arrived. It suddenly occurred to Yv that despite all the changes that had happened to him, he still didn’t fully believe that the meeting with the Creator had actually taken place.

  Somewhere inside of him lay a smoldering thought that it was all nonsense and the delusion of someone lost in despair, but his new abilities ... He had heard many such tales in taverns before. One day some don, on the edge of danger, had pulled away the anchorage cables from a shuttle craft. Another had punched a hole in the hull of a battleship with the gloved hand of his battle suit, stronger than a blasting charge ...

  Not all of them were fiction, but nowhere else had Yv ever heard of something that could cut through kelimit. Nowhere, except in the legends of the Eternal One.

  The roaring was very close by, but from right around the corner there came a shriek and the tramping sound of many feet, which did not belong to trolls or Kazgarot. Yv raised his sword, setting out his stance and brought down his hand abruptly, almost falling. The sword cut through the kelimit as if it was tissue paper. Yv stood there, stunned, staring at his handiwork, and then with three more cuts he made a narrow aperture. He got what he wanted. they could barely squeeze through, but the trolls and the bigger Kazgarot surely could not follow. Yv turned and pointed to the hole in the door and said. “Go on, I’ll hold them off.”

  They all stood, dumbfounded, staring at the gap cut into the kelimit. Tera merely nodded calmly, and she was the first to step forward.

  There were still four left in the hallway, when two dozen short figures similar to teddy bears but around four feet in height came around the corner. At the sight of Yv and the Space Marines with drawn swords they slowed down so dramatically that some could not help themselves tumbling over comically, rolling right under their feet. One of the girls went to swing her sword, but Yv stopped her.

  “Wait, I have an idea.”

  He leaned over to one who had fallen, and who lay huddled on the ground frozen with fear and lifted it to its feet. It stood for a while with its eyes closed, but then could not resist, opened them, and stared straight into Yv’s face through his visor.

  Blinking in surprise, the teddy bear froze. Yv slowly stepped back and pointed to the gap in the door. The poor thing blinked in surprise. At the same time, the roar of a Kazgarot sounded out very close by. The teddy bear glanced fearfully at his fellow creatures, then, side by side, they moved towards the gap and slipped inside. There was another roar. Yv nodded to the Space Marines, and putting himself into battle mode, he turned to the intersection of the corridors. The teddy bear creatures shied off, frightened, but he had no time to worry about them. He knew that Kazgarot were about to come around the corner, and so they did. Their ugly muzzles were covered in something or other and their eyes burned with a hunger for murder. He had never met a Kazgarot head on before, but there was no time to wonder what might happen to him. Yv raised his sword and sprang forward.

  Leaving behind the carcasses of several Kazgarot and half a dozen trolls, Yv climbed in through the gap. All the girls were waiting for him, but the teddy bear was nowhere to be seen. Tera looked at him for a long moment, then turned and walked forward. A hundred feet on, they stumbled upon a door decorated with ornate patterns. Two of the girls routinely pulled some blasting charges from over their shoulders, but a gesture fr
om Tera stopped them.

  “Wait.”

  Everyone froze, looking at her, puzzled. They didn’t have to wait for long. the door slowly swung open. Tera, paused for a second, put her sword back in its sheath and stepped forward resolutely.

  The room they entered could only be the conning tower of the ship. However, the displays were in a hexagonal shape and the seats for the operators were grouped into several hexagons instead of horseshoe shaped consoles or straight rows, but everything here was so like a conning tower that it was impossible to mistake it for anything else.

  Strange-looking creatures were sat in front of the consoles, vaguely resembling ostriches or emus, although they had two arms and legs. When Yv squeezed in behind Tera, all the emu-like creatures stood and turned to them. One stepped forward and held an object to its mouth. The next moment a voice sounded out from hidden speakers.

  “We need to know who broke through the door?” The words were in English, but its voice was somewhat raspy and hissing at the same time. If was as if part of the frequency was not playing, and some parts were slightly drowned out.

  Tera made a clear gestured towards Yv.

  “He did.”

  The Emu turned to him and using gestures it asked. “Why did he make the gap that size and not much larger?” It spread its arms out to indicate its meaning.

  Yv was silent, feeling that it was Tera’s right to conduct the conversation. She did not disappoint him.

  “We have seen what the Lower Castes have done to the Useful Ones and we did not want to give them the opportunity to do the same to the Privileged Ones.

  An excited chatter swept through the room. Then Yv saw the teddy bears. They were stood far away in corner where a small paddock had been put together for them. He smiled inside. What else could be expected when dealing with a Lower Caste! As far as these Emus were concerned, the teddy bears were little more than animals.