by Rick Partlow
“What you say is true, warrior,” the Matriarch acknowledged, signaling impatience with a spreading of her fingers and a shifting of her stance. “But what would you have us do?”
“We need weapons,” he declared. “We need enough weapons to tip the balance. And you, oh Matriarch, know where those weapons can be had.”
The dance of the females ceased abruptly and they stared at him as if he had defecated in the Pit of the Sacrament. The protégé actually took a step toward him, as if she intended to vault the wall and attack him, and a few of the males made gestures of shock before she controlled herself. The Matriarch motioned the other females to remain calm, and regarded him with a cool fury.
“Male, you speak of things you should not know, particularly as a newcomer to this world. This is a secret that was shared with me in the strictest and most holy confidence. The only ones who know of this are in the group around me. Has one of them strayed from the Path and betrayed my trust?”
“You forget something, honored Matriarch,” Vala-Kel said gently. “There was one other who knew: the male who entrusted you with the secret to begin with, Colonel Gar-Shan-Tan-Ro.”
“He survived the final battle here?” The female seemed shocked. “He swore to me that he would die rather than surrender.”
“And he nearly did. But the Will of the Emperor was that he survive his wounds, and he and I wound up in the same internment camp on Tahn-Skyyiah after the war’s end.”
“Why would he share this thing with you, Vala-Kel?” she demanded, her stance skeptical. “Even if you speak the truth, why would he tell you of this?”
“Because he, too, understood that we have been betrayed.” Vala-Kel’s tone was as harsh and unyielding as a blade to the throat. “We were led astray by a False Emperor, a liar who took us away from the true Path and brought a civilization that had lasted ten thousand years to ruin, brought our people to their bellies at the feet of a conqueror who knows not the Path or the Will of the Emperor.”
Even the Matriarch seemed taken aback by the warrior’s vehemence and fury. Kan-Ten looked at his old friend and tried to recall if he’d ever seen that anger before. He couldn’t remember anything but comradeship and bravado when they’d been in battle together, but that was before they had lost the war.
“He gave me his secret,” Vala-Kel continued, “and I probed for its like from others there in my prison, who’d been stationed on other worlds. I know, honored Matriarch, that the Colonel entrusted to you the location of the weapons he cached for the final push against the humans, the one that never came. I know it’s hidden in these canyons, and I know you alone have the entrance codes.”
“And you wish to use these weapons against the humans here.” It wasn’t a question, and Vala-Kel didn’t bother to answer it. “Do you think their military will ignore this? That they won’t come back here and kill each and every one of us in retaliation? Or kill all the warriors and send the rest of us somewhere worse, somewhere the sun never shines through the clouds and the water is frozen most of the year? Do you honestly believe they’ll regard us here, ruling one of their worlds, and do nothing?”
“If my plans were so simple and child-like, you would be right to mock me, honored Matriarch,” he said smoothly, as if his earlier anger had been affected, an act for the crowd. Was it? How well, Kan-ten wondered, did he actually know his old comrade? Vala-Kel shot him a reassuring glance before he continued.
“There is a human named Jordi Abdullah who leads one of the criminal cartels out in the Pirate Worlds. He wants to use this colony as a new base for his operations, but he lacks the people to conquer it himself. That is,” he corrected his words, “he could possibly conquer it, but he couldn’t control it for long. Not without help.”
“You would ally us with a human?” the protégé blurted, talking out of turn but past caring. “And a criminal at that?”
The Matriarch slapped the younger female on the arm sharply, shooting her a reproving glance.
“It is a good question, Vala-Kel,” the leader of the females admitted.
“As you say, honored Matriarch, we cannot simply take this place under our rule. We will act as the foot soldiers for Jordi Abdullah, and he will take control of this city. By the time the human authorities get wind of anything, his people will be in place as the new planetary Constable and colonial governor, and the records will show they were rightly elected…because he will write the records. And no one here will question it openly, because we will be here, and we will be armed, and autonomous, and ready to put down those who would threaten this arrangement.”
It was, Kan-Ten reflected, a good plan. It was simple and relied on the self-interest of all involved, which was brilliant, because plans that counted on the benevolence of others were doomed to failure. He thought he saw those same thoughts pass across the face of the Matriarch.
“This course of action has its appeal,” the old female admitted. “But what guarantee do we have that this cartel boss will not grow tired of sharing this world with us and simply take everything for his own?”
“We will be armed. We will not give up our weapons, and to fight us would cost him much. Better to have us as a partner on this world than as yet another enemy.”
“My son,” the Matriarch began slowly, and Kan-Ten felt a tinge of disbelief---for the Matriarch herself to call a warrior that invoked high status and regard. “My son, I believe you when you say you have faith in this course of action, and there is much to be commended in its daring and its simplicity. But a voice speaks to my fears and says that it would mean the end of us all. It is in just such an underestimation of our enemy that we found ruin so recently.”
“Give council to your fears and you allow them to rule,” Vala-Kel quoted the Truth of the Path to the Matriarch and again, there were expressions of shock. That was impertinent.
“Yet to whom I give council,” the old female returned with a fire that belied her advanced years, “is my decision, as is to whom I allow access to these weapons, young male.”
“Warriors!” That was Rya-Jan, his voice raised in alarm, the expression on his face nearly frantic. “I have received warning from the watch! Vehicles are approaching up the road!”
“Humans,” Vala-Kel spat, and a panicked rumble ran through the thirty-two males present.
Kan-Ten jumped to the top of the wall, the biochemical storm of lust suddenly gone, replaced by something even more atavistic and primitive.
“Get to your vehicles,” he called to the Matriarch, motioning urgently. “We will hold them off until you’re safely away from here.”
He’d barely spoken the words when the rear doors on the female side of the Sanctuary burst open and dark, shadow-clad figures poured through them. They were dressed in black to blend with the night, and Kan-Ten had time to think that the vehicles were a distraction, that these men had crept up on them and drawn the sentries away with the trucks coming up the road to give them an opening to reach the entrance. Then thought deserted him and he threw himself down off the wall and through the crowd of Tahni females and slammed into the lead human with the full weight of his shoulder.
He could hear ribs crack at the impact, and felt the force of it rock him backwards even as it sent the human tumbling head-over-heels to trip up two of his fellows as they crowded through the choke-point of the narrow entrance hallway. Three more of them were on him immediately, and he swung wildly, trying to keep them away as the closest raised a blade, ready for a downward strike that would slice right through him.
Then Vala-Kel was there as if he’d materialized out of the smoke from the Flame of the Path, catching the knife-hand at the wrist and wrenching sideways, yanking the human away and into the shadows. Kan-Ten longed for a weapon, but there were none inside the Sanctuary, so he used what Fontenot had taught him over the years and kicked at knees, chopped at necks, gouged at eyes and threw himself into the humans as they tried to crowd through the door. They might have guns, but if he could stay cl
ose enough, they wouldn’t dare use them.
Blows rained down at him as he tried to engage three of them at a time, but most were ineffectual, and he ignored them either way; as Fontenot liked to say, there were no “time-outs” in combat. One of them went down after a kick to the knee and he pistoned a heel down into the human’s face as he moved past him, grappling with the next. There was the hiss-crack of a gunshot, a mini-rocket pistol he judged, and another, a deep-throated boom from a flechette gun, but it didn’t hit him and it didn’t hit the man trying to kill him, and he couldn’t be concerned with anything else.
Others were crowded around and he felt a morose certainty that he was about to die, about to go down beneath their numbers and be stomped to death or stabbed or shot on the ground. When that didn’t happen, when fewer blows rained down rather than more, he began to realize that the others around him were Tahni males, that they’d followed him and Vala-Kel over the wall to defend the Matriarch. A surge of energy seemed to flow through him at the knowledge that he wasn’t alone and he yanked the human off his feet and slammed him to the ground, pounding the man’s face and neck with hammer-blows from his fists until bone cracked and blood spattered him.
Human blood, he thought not for the first time, smelled and tasted much like Tahni blood. It couldn’t be a coincidence; the gods were at work here, or the Predecessors the humans always harped on, the ancient aliens who had engineered living worlds like this one ,and then vanished eons ago. What would they think if they saw their legacy, writ in blood across the worlds they’d made?
He shook the esoteric thoughts away with the realization that he’d taken a blow to the head, perhaps more than one, and his mind was beginning to drift. He tried to find someone else to fight, another target, but there was more shooting…and he could see the flashes of tiny rocket motors heading towards the entrance hall, see the miniature starbursts of the warheads igniting against the dark camouflage clothing the humans wore. Two of them went down, thrashing and spasming in their death throes, and then the ones that remained were fleeing back through the rear door, tearing at each other in their haste to retreat.
Kan-Ten sagged, supporting himself against the rough-hewn stone of the nearest wall, sucking in an unsteady breath. Five humans were sprawled on the dirt-covered floor, arrayed around the rear exit like a sacrifice, some shot, some beaten to death. Beside them, two Tahni males were down as well, their lives claimed by the flechette guns the humans had brought. He looked over to Vala-Kel, who was standing firm and resolute, a large and menacing handgun clutched in his left fist, curls of smoke still rising around him from the rounds he’d fired.
“You have brought a weapon into the place of Concord.” That was the protégé; she stood in front of the Matriarch in a stance of protection, her tone full of outrage. “It is a violation of sacred tradition!”
“It is a violation of tradition,” the Matriarch affirmed, stepping past the younger female, her voice less accusatory than deeply sad. “And yet, this is a time when tradition may not save us.”
She stepped carefully around the bodies, her sandals sticking briefly and then pulling free of the growing pools of blood with an obscene, viscous sound, and stopped only centimeters from Vala-Kel, eyes boring up into his.
“Perhaps,” she said, “we must face the truth that our traditions need to change.”
“But Matriarch,” the protégé said, sounding scandalized, “if we abandon our rituals, if we break our own laws, what are we?”
“What we are, child,” the old female answered her, never looking away from the warrior, “is a people with very little left to lose.”
Chapter Seven
Korri Fontenot woke from a nightmare of being crushed again, of being buried under the walls of the base on Andalusia after the missiles had penetrated the defenses and brought down the barracks. She’d been trapped under tons of debris for days, and what they’d dragged out barely resembled a human. They told her she’d begged them to let her die, but she didn’t remember that, didn’t remember anything but the pressure, the crushing pressure of the metal cross-beams bearing down on her arms and legs and chest…
She forced herself through the residual pain and confusion of the sonic stunner and realized that the nightmare was real. Her left shoulder, the bionic half of her, was pinned, trapped beneath something large and flat and metal, and she felt a surge of nearly uncontrollable panic, barely suppressing the whimper that seemed to want to claw its way out of her chest.
“Wakey-wakey, Fontenot. Time we had a talk.”
It was Jordi. She’d recognize that voice anywhere, and then he was in front of her, leaning over sideways, a look of mockery on his dark, hairless face as he met her eyes. They were in a shop of some kind, the walls bare corrugated aluminum set in a concrete slab floor, machine tools and metal cutters and fabricators cluttered together, all with the air of disuse. Jordi’s people were cluttered together as well, huddled in folding chairs or cots or just on blankets stretched out on the floor, some watching her, some absorbed with card games or videos or ViR goggles.
She was, she gradually realized, pinned beneath an industrial stamping press of some kind; and as strong as she was, not even her cybernetics could overcome that sort of pressure. She’d been played.
“Have you been following me since I landed?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even, trying to keep the fear and rage and the burgeoning panic out of it.
“Only since you visited the Constable,” he corrected her, not caring that he was giving her information, not caring that she was stalling. That wasn’t a good sign. “We’ve been keeping an eye on Mr. Freeman; he’s far too capable a man to take lightly. Imagine my surprise when I saw you walk through those doors…” He laughed and reached out a hand to run a finger over the synthskin on the left side of her face. “Although I must admit it took me a moment to recognize you after your makeover. Was that Hollande’s idea? To make you blend in more, attract less attention?”
He shook his head, leaning against the side of the machine. “She’s a clever bitch. She even managed to turn that mad dog Singh against me, though God knows how.” His smooth, cocky smile faded for a moment, replaced by something dark and bitter. “Everyone seems to have gotten the idea that I’m weak, that they can hurt me now, that this is their opportunity.”
There was something different about the man, she thought. He seemed less smooth and sharp and polished now, rougher around the edges. She thought she saw new lines of stress on a face that had once been perpetually young, and there was a harried look to him, to the set of his eyes and the lay of his clothes.
“I’m not running with Hollande anymore,” Fontenot insisted, knowing he probably wouldn’t believe her, but deciding it was worth the effort anyway. “We parted ways; I’m on my own now.”
“Really?” His voice was heavy with skepticism and she saw his fingers tapping on the side of the press, just above the control panel. “Then what the hell are you doing here? That’s an awful coincidence, isn’t it, the two of us being here at the same time? You think it’s fate, or bad karma? Maybe it’s the universe’s way of getting back at you for betraying me?”
“I’m just working a job. The planetary government put out a call for gunfighters, anyone who’d be willing to help them with their Tahni problem. I was between gigs and I needed the money.”
“Oh give me a fucking break,” Jordi said, laughing sharply. “You, the only one of us that Tahni freak Kan-Ten would even talk to, suddenly deciding you’re going to go find some Tahni colonists to shoot? Do you think I’m a fucking idiot, Fontenot?”
He touched a control and the press hummed to life, its gears churning as it began pushing against her shoulder even harder, the metal of her prosthetic creaking with the added pressure, coming closer to buckling, coming closer to pinching into her flesh. She closed her eyes, her teeth clenched as she readied herself for the pain.
The hum died away and she slowly and reluctantly opened her eyes and craned h
er head back to look over to where Jordi had hit the control again, halting the press. He leered at her, his finger poised over the touch pad, twitching as if he might hit it by accident.
“Would you like to try again?” He slid his handgun from its belt holster and touched the cold metal of its muzzle against the side of her face. “You’re going to die, Fontenot. You and I both know that. The question is whether it’s clean, fast, easy…” He motioned with the muzzle of the heavy pistol. “…or slow, and messy, and oh, so painful.”
Someone laughed nearby. She couldn’t see them, couldn’t see much except a cockeyed version of Jordi Abdullah and a small section of the shop floor, but the laugh was harsh and bawdy and male, and she wanted to rip the man’s throat out.
“I know you don’t have much actual human left in you, bitch,” Jordi hissed so close to her face that she could feel drops of his spittle on her cheek, “but I’m perfectly willing to keep cutting and burning and crushing until I get to the soft, creamy center.”
His finger touched the button again, just a teasing glance for a half-second and Fontenot grunted, halfway to a scream as the press pushed downward another fraction of a centimeter.
“Last chance. Where are Hollande and Carpenter?”
There was a booming crash, the unmistakable sound of a door being kicked in, and then a crackling hiss; before Jordi could even look up from her face, she could already see the black smoke, smell the bitter, burning fumes. He moved quickly, dancing away from her narrow field of view, and she saw a confused collage of panicked motion before the smoke began to close in, and all that could penetrate it was sound. There were shouts and yells and scurrying, and the clatter of overturning chairs, and the scrape of feet on the rough concrete of the floor, and when the shooting finally started all she could wonder was why it had taken so long.
Mini-rockets hissed in all directions, and at least one pulse laser weapon was firing, but through the yells and the racket and the shooting, she could make out a peculiar, high-pitched hum overlain with the snap-snap-snap of multiple projectiles breaking the sound barrier so close together they could have been one, continuous stream. It was a Gauss machine pistol, a needler some called them, adapted as a civilian weapon from the KE-guns the Tahni used during the war. They were expensive and rare and she’d only known one man who’d actually owned one…