Toth

by James C. Glass

  “All are baptized,” said Davos, “even many of the older planters.”

  There were voices from outside, and Takey appeared in the doorway. “Kari is gone, sir, we can’t find her anywhere, and Osen just got a message from Captain Elg. Colonel Mootry has ordered us to move back to the camp immediately. He’s expecting an attack and Osen’s telling everyone to get his or her things together.

  Michael went to the door, heard Osen screaming orders from the next house. The boy sprinted towards him. “Grab your things, sir. The others are on their way to the trailhead in a minute. Ten minutes ago, Colonel Mootry detected a feeler beam on the ship. Someone has them locked in a laser sight! He wants us out of here now!”

  “Not without Kari,” shouted Michael. “Get the others moving. I’m going to the obelisk.”

  “I’m staying with you, sir! Mootry’s orders.”

  “Shit,” said Michael. “Come with me, then, and watch your rear. The people in the obelisk are probably armed.”

  Gini stood with both hands over her mouth, eyes wide. “Get inside. There might be trouble,” said Michael, but she stood frozen there. He put an arm around her, pulled her towards the house. “Please?” Reluctantly she went inside where Davos grabbed her and hustled her towards the back of the house.

  Osen was right behind him when he reached the amphitheatre. Behind him his crews had assembled their kits and were trotting in a line between two houses towards the trail leading back to camp. The doors to the obelisk opened slightly, someone peeking out before slamming them tightly shut again. Michael ran, but was too late. He pounded on the doors with the flat of his hand, then a fist. “You have one of our people in there and we’ve been ordered to leave at once! We’re leaving the village; do you understand? Now send the woman out, and we’ll be gone!”

  No answer. Michael pounded again. “We’re not leaving here until you send the woman out!” He threw a shoulder against the doors and they creaked, giving a little. “I’ll force my way in if I have to!”

  The smell of ozone wafted from the crack between the doors. “Down, Major!” screamed Osen, slamming into him. Burned wood exploded from six places in the doors, and Michael felt laser heat stroke the top of his head as he hit the ground. They crawled away. Four more searing columns of orange light burst through the doors, and then Michael and Osen were running zigzag across the square towards Davos’ house. The doors banged open behind them, and beams exploded tree limbs and brush beyond which Michael’s team had just reached the trailhead and were climbing fast. Someone cried out in pain.

  They reached Davos’ doorway and crouched there. Michael glanced at Osen pressed to his back, expecting to see fear there, but what he saw instead was a thin smile and narrowed, dark eyes, a look devoid of emotion or feeling. The doors of the obelisk were open, and counselors streamed outside in a line moving towards the trailhead. One man broke off, and headed straight for the house. He trotted towards them, a laser rifle in his hand.

  A second swarm of counselors appeared in the obelisk doorway, fanning out in all directions, but not fast enough as the roar of assault rifle fire from the ridge suddenly beat against their ears. Men were hammered to the ground. One man’s head exploded, and a door to the obelisk suddenly disappeared in splinters. Those few remaining stumbled back inside, and closed the remaining door that was shot to pieces in an instant. Tracer rounds screamed into the obelisk, shattering stone, lighting the interior with death for those near the doorway.

  The counselor running towards Michael ducked, but came on. Michael looked for a weapon, a knife, a pot, anything. He jumped across the doorway to the kitchen, found only a pot to throw, turned back and saw Osen crouched like a cat at the door, his face a horror, and in his right hand was the biggest knife Michael had ever seen, a curving thing with serrated blade. “Where the hell did you get that?”

  “Boot, sir,” said Osen, and then Davos burst from the adjoining room to stand in the doorway, blocking it.

  “You’ll kill no person in this house without killing me first!” he shouted.

  “I’m not here for that. Follow me to the beach, to the boat, everyone! You’re cut off from the others. Quick!”

  It was Nimri, Davos’ only son.

  “Father, please! We have no time!”

  Michael stepped to the doorway, saw Nimri’s rifle leveled at him. “I’m going with you; don’t try to stop me. Everyone, father, not just these two. I’m getting all of you out of here! Trust me!”

  Davos hurried to the back of the house as Michael and Osen stepped outside and Nimri saw the big knife. “There’s a guard on the beach,” said Michael.

  “I have a rifle.”

  “We’ll need that,” said Osen. “I’m on it, Major.” The boy pushed Nimri’s rifle aside with lightning speed and ran crouched over into the trees and brush between the house and the beach.

  Davos arrived with his family: Gini, Leah, Deena, the little boy Uhel in his mother’s arms. There was a horrible scream from the hillside above them, someone hit by laser fire. It had to be a member of the team. “Follow me,” said Michael. There was no movement near the obelisk as gunfire continued to tear at earth and stone. They crept through bushes along a sandy path and despite their care the dry grass crunched underfoot so that when they crouched at the edge of the beach they saw the guard well out on it, rifle leveled towards them. Brush suddenly crashed forward meters to the left of them, and the guard fired twice into it, advanced, and fired again. He probed the brush with his rifle. A dark figure emerged silently from bushes to his right, and crept up on him from behind with the speed of a great cat, the knife flashing as it severed his throat from ear to ear. The guard fell gurgling to the ground. Gini moaned, and pressed up against Michael’s back.

  Osen held up the guard’s rifle. “Now we have two. There’s a staff over there by the boat.”

  They turned over a skiff and collectively shoved it into the surf; Gini put Uhel in, crawled up over the stern ahead of the other women, and hunkered down. Weapons in the boat, the men swam holding on to railings, and Michael pushed. From shore it seemed as if a boat had broken loose, drifting beyond the surf. But in minutes they had reached Davos’ fishing craft and clambered aboard, hauling anchors, Nimri helping his father set sail. Gunfire was scattered now, occasional tracers still descending from the ridge.

  “Hope the others made it,” said Michael, but the instant he said that there was a horrible explosion of gunfire atop the cliff between the village and their encampment, a long barrage of sustained fire interspersed with screams. Krisha, thought Michael. She intercepted the pursuing counselors. How many of our people are still alive?

  The boat moved straight out to sea, Davos at the tiller, Osen checked the rifles. Michael went to him, clapped him on the shoulder. “Nice job, Osen. You’re a real killer.”

  Osen gave him a dark, frightening look. “You’re right, sir, that’s exactly what I am.” He went back to checking power levels on the rifles. Without the heavy power packs normally carried by combat infantry each rifle could only be fired twenty to thirty times. Michael went to Davos. “How far out do we go?”

  “As far as you wish.”

  “Okay, stay on course half an hour, then turn west. I want to go back to the encampment.”

  Davos nodded, and for several minutes they sailed in silence. Stars sparkled above them, and the usual blanket of evening fog rose from the sea ahead.

  The silence was broken by the sound of a powerful engine, faint at first, back towards shore, growing louder. Far off to their left something skimmed over the water, throwing up a fountain of spray in all directions. It passed them hundreds of meters away and sped out to sea, engine shrieking. Davos gasped; “What is that?”

  “Airboat,” said Osen. “A big one, heading for the island. Major, what do you want to bet Diego and Jezrul are on that thing?”

  “Yeah, and I wonder if Kari is on it, too,” said Michael. “So much for the village not having technology.”

&n
bsp; “I’ve never seen it before,” said Davos. “Should we try and follow it?”

  “No. Back to camp and regroup and I’m calling down a flyer. We’re going to make an unfriendly visit to that island, and soon. Osen how’s the radio?”

  “Damp, but okay, sir. We need to be further west before I can get the camp. The cliffs are still in the way.”

  “We’re far enough out, Davos, so let’s head west. Osen, you work the radio and as soon as you can, patch a relay to Colonel Mootry. I’m going to call for a flyer right away.”

  They turned west, and sailed for several minutes, Osen tried unsuccessfully to reach the camp by radio. Michael watched the sky, and suddenly a bright star was moving up from the western horizon. “Here comes the ship. Any luck?”

  “Nothing, sir. Captain Elg must have cleaned out the camp for now.”

  “We’ll have to wait until next orbit, then,” said Michael. He watched the star that was his home in space, the star he would reluctantly return to when the job was done. I don’t want to go back there, he thought. If the circumstances were right I would much rather be where I am right now. The star reached its zenith, moved down towards the eastern horizon, flickering in light wisps of fog. At the horizon, three converging beams of orange light surged upwards to meet it, pulsing once, twice, then holding steady. The star brightened like a sudden nova, a trail of mini-stars in red and yellow scattering behind as it disappeared comet-like over the horizon.

  Osen saw it, too. “Holy Mother,” he said, “they’re attacking the ship! What are we going to do now?”

  Michael felt a chill in his stomach. “Head for the camp,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Kari awoke in darkness and panicked when she tried to take a breath. The gag was tight, filling her mouth, and she inhaled sharply through her nose. Her hands were bound numbly behind her back, her legs and ankles tied together and bent upward towards her hands through a connecting bond. She squirmed, and the ropes bit hard. She was lying on her side on a cold floor in absolute blackness. Her jaw and neck hurt where Jezrul had struck. Still alive, she thought, but for how long?

  She was in a room of some kind and there were voices outside, soft, then loud, then shouting and she distinctly heard gunfire from a distance. Footsteps pounded the floor outside and the door rattled, opened, and flooded her with green light. Jezrul came into the room and swept her up in his arms, face close to hers. “We certainly wouldn’t want to leave you behind, would we?” He carried her down the hall. She struggled to look back around him, and saw two counselors drag Diego stumbling between them from his room. They took the elevator down. Diego groaned softly, a bloody gash on his forehead. “Ah, our Master Counselor awakes. If you’d accepted the evening drink I offered, you would be enjoying the trip,” said Jezrul. “I will enjoy it for you, holding this little treasure in my arms.”

  Diego didn’t respond, near unconsciousness, but Kari twisted and squirmed as Jezrul’s long fingers found her right breast. The sounds of gunfire were getting louder as they descended, and when the doors opened the roar was deafening, men running, screaming, and the hallway filled with acrid smoke and pieces of burning wood. Tracer fire was coming through an open doorway, the bodies of dead men jumping with the impact of armor-piercing bullets that splattered blood and stone from the floor. Jezrul leapt past the doorway in one bound, but behind them one of the men holding Diego went down screaming, the other dragging his burden miraculously ahead without harm. They went to the sanctuary where several cloaked men and boys stood silently, eyes wide with fear. “Stay where you are,” shouted Jezrul, “and if they attack the sanctuary throw down your arms. It is not Toth’s will for you to die, and I will return with His own army to free you!”

  He carried her beyond the altar and to the wall-hanging left of where she had hidden, another flap covering the entrance to a corridor lit by globes of moss. They passed several doorless, empty rooms smelling of dust and mold, into an area with a high ceiling, and ascending wooden stairs to a walkway ending in a few steps. Jezrul jumped lightly from the end of the walkway. A wooden floor rocked beneath them as they landed. He dumped Kari hard at his feet, and then helped the other man with Diego. She saw a control console, a wheel for steering, railings, and the smooth curve of wood facing one wall of the room. They were in a boat! She was lying on the foredeck, a low-slung cabin aft.

  Jezrul flopped Diego against a railing opposite her and tied his hands to it with two pieces of rope. “Get the door,” he shouted, then went to the controls of the boat and turned a key there. A whine began in the bowels of the craft, ascending in pitch as Kari wriggled on the deck, trying to get on her knees. Her legs had gone numb and she fell over facing the bow, staring at a huge door rolling upwards. Night air flowed coldly over her. The other man jumped into the boat as Jezrul pulled hard on a lever and they were suddenly moving, metal screeching. The whine of what had to be a turbine screamed beneath her. The boat moved slowly at first, past the door and she looked up to see stars twinkling, feeling a lurch as they turned right, picking up speed. Hills loomed on both sides of them as they slid at an increasing angle of descent. Trees sped by, and wind whipped her face, and then a sudden deceleration rolled her completely over once. There was a spray of water on her face, and the sudden roar of an engine aft. The boat accelerated, surf jarring them, then smoothing as they came up to speed. Jezrul gestured for the other man to take the wheel, then came over to Kari, untied the rope binding her feet to her hands, the one around her thighs. He sat her up and removed the gag, running a wet finger over her lower lip. “That’s better, No use covering such a pretty mouth now.”

  “Where are you taking me?” she said.

  “To Lord Toth, of course. Perhaps he will be in a merciful mood. And if the others come after you, as I hope they will, we will kill all of them and leave their bodies for the Charni.”

  The boat roared on as they headed straight out to sea where the man-god called Toth awaited her arrival.

  Later on, she did not see a moving star suddenly flare brightly above her.

  * * * * * * *

  Krisha was filled with fear for Kari and the others, but remained her professional self throughout the afternoon and evening. After Mootry’s first message, she had moved all her marines to the ridge and the place where the trail skirted the high cliff. One marine and Nik Balestrieri had remained behind with her; Nik was on the radio as they waited for the next flyover. She assembled her kit, with knife, sidearm, and radio and assault rifle, checked each piece and covered her face and hands with black greasepaint. Now she paced the perimeter of the camp, mumbling to herself; “Why did you have to go, baby, why?” At best she was missing, swallowed up by the obelisk. How could Mike have risked letting her go in there? I thought he’d be with you all the time. I worried that you and he would—

  “Captain! Colonel Mootry wants you now!” Nik screamed, and waved his arms at the door to the earth-covered radio shack. Krisha sprinted to him, kit rattling, and rushed to the radio. “Just got on the line,” said Nik.

  “Patch this through to the ridge and cliff parties,” she said breathlessly. “Colonel? What’s up?”

  “We just detected a feeler beam at four thousand angstroms, Krish. Someone has us in a laser sight and I’m going to a high orbit. Get our people out of the village right now and move everyone up to cover them!”

  “They’re already in place, sir, only three of us left here.”

  “Get up there yourself and do whatever’s necessary to protect our people. I’m going to boosters in one minute as soon as we’re past your horizon. That feeler is still on us.”

  “Good luck, sir. I’m on my way. Emerald Base out.”

  “Belsus out.”

  Krisha stood. “Get your rifle, Nik. You and Dala are holding the fort. Shoot anyone you don’t recognize and make sure Dala watches the sea for any incoming boats. Pull the cable sling up and keep it up until I’m back.”

  “Got it,” said Nik. “Watch you
rself, Captain.”

  Krisha didn’t hear him, already out the door and charging towards the camp perimeter. She slammed home the bolt of her assault rifle and flicked it to full automatic as she ran. She headed toward the trail at full gallop, stopping briefly at the base of the ridge to shout into her radio; “Tango, you there?”

  “Here, Captain. Quiet, so far. We saw Queal and Osen come down from a ridge a while ago. We’ve patched the news through to Osen and they should be moving by now.”

  “You hear one shot, you open up immediately. Our people can only come up the trail, so cover them.”

  “Can’t see the trail from here, Captain.”

  “Then spray the village. Let ’em know you’re there. I’m going up the trail.” She clicked off and trotted up the trail away from the lights around the camp perimeter, now suddenly in darkness. With rifle, grenades, and ten magazines her total kit weighed thirty pounds, but with the adrenalin rush her body was experiencing, her legs refused to acknowledge the weight. The night was eerily quiet, a light mist floating far out to sea in the last gleams of twilight. Her breathing was loud, boots snapping twigs, crunching stone and suddenly, ten meters ahead, a dark figure leapt from the brush and into the center of the trail. “Get off the trail!” she shouted. “It’s Elg!”

  Figures moved in the trees and brush as she stopped at cliff’s edge, gasping; “Hear anything?”

  “Shouting down there a few minutes ago,” said a marine.

  “Get down and listen.” Krisha stepped off the trail and crouched shoulder to shoulder against a boy with wide eyes. First combat, she thought. “Load and lock,” she said and bolts snapped. I had to tell them. Oh boy!

  They waited, listening. She heard a shout, then another—closer. There was another sound, like a metal string plucked, then a shrill scream. “Follow my lead,” she said. “Fire at my command, full auto.” Two fire control levers clicked in the darkness.

  Ahead of them a laser beam flashed on a tree at cliff’s edge, smoking a branch and simultaneously they heard another shrill scream of pain and the roar of assault rifle fire echoing from the village. “Steady. Fingers off the trigger until I fire.” She leveled her rifle at the bend in the trail ahead. Feet pounded the ground, people groaning, and stumbling around the bend, Utaka in the lead. The remaining members crashed by them, unaware of their presence, but others were coming, robed figures, three, four, now six of them, one snapping off a shot that blasted dirt over her. “Now!” she screamed and fired, emptying a thirty round magazine in a six second burst of death. As five other magazines emptied, Krisha snapped a new one into her rifle and sprayed the pursuers again. Men screamed, two of them disappearing over the cliff, the rest hammered to the ground in a pulpy mess. In fifteen seconds it was over, but still the roar of rifle fire came from the village. Krisha held up a hand and they waited for a moment, but nothing moved ahead of them.