by Alma Boykin
“So I learned. And when you came, when someone stronger and more determined than the Foul Ones appeared, burning became blazing.”
Should she say something? Rada didn’t want to, but Luchs seemed strong enough to take the news and to know how to get the Likari moving. “Ma’am, we have not accounted for all of the Foul Ones. We need you, your people, to scatter, to spread out, so that any remaining Foul Ones cannot hurt a great many of you all at once, or trap you in the caves and kill you there.”
Luchs drooped, her torso dipping level with the ground, then straightened again. “So my task is not yet done. I will try.”
Rada turned to D’ousee. “She’s the key. Stay with her, guard her. I—” Something very wrong slammed into her emotional awareness, something so foul and sick with pain-hunger that Rada snapped into full battle-fury without warning. “Danger in the tunnel, get them out! Move, move, move!” She turned and headed straight for the source of the evil. Cries, wailing, and worse came through the audio pick-ups in her helmet and Rada forced through the wall of Likari. They moved against her, shifting from stillness to a near-panic rush, flowing out of the portal. Rada thought she heard the lieutenant’s voice, but the roar of blood and fire in her ears drowned him out. She slammed her shields up as waves of anguish swept through the mass of Likari. Not on my watch, you monsters!
Self preservation drove the Likari to make a gap for her, and Rada raced into the darkness, her combat vision enhancers snapping into place as she unslung her rifle. She skidded around a curve, saw motion, and heard the scream as a pain-whip touched flesh. Too close to fire, she flipped the rifle around and use the armored butt as a club, smashing the Foul One’s unprotected head. It shattered and the pain-master dropped. He wasn’t alone, and Rada wiped the ichor from the butt and raised it to her shoulder, firing at the largest shape that moved. She missed but the enemy female released her captive. The Likari scuttled past Rada on three legs, dripping blood. Rada’s second shot hit. A third shot sliced past just above her head, eliminating another pain-master. Rada started to relax when five more Ouzga loomed up from the darkness. The corporal behind her said something Rada didn’t catch but understood the general meaning of. One of the pain-masters swung her whip, forcing Rada to duck and lose her shot.
Five on three should have been easy. Nothing in Rada’s worlds came easy. Confined space and darkness gave the Ouzga the advantage, and they grabbed the closest Likari as shields, keeping the soldiers from firing. Rada didn’t want to close within range of the pain whips, but she couldn’t think of an option without risking slaughtering the Likari still rushing past. “Fix bayonets.” She pressed a stud on the trigger guard and an energy knife appeared at the end of the barrel, shimmering in the darkness. “Sic ‘em.”
Some time later, Rada stalked up to where the others stood outside the portal, still directing the Likari out of the way. D’ousee stared and blurted, “Blast it to the tenth inferno, Cap’n! What the fuck?”
Rada dropped the mating queen’s head on D’ousee’s armored toes. “Hand-to-hand. Got ten of the monsters, six of those fucking pain-masters.” She felt lousy, probably smelled worse, and wanted to go roll in a cesspit just so she’d have something cleaner on her than Ouzga blood. “Report.”
“Miss Luchs is a miracle worker, ma’am. She got ‘em movin’, cleared the cave mouth and stopped the panic before it could spread once I told her that you’d gone to sort out the problem. She’s over there with Corporal Crax, taking care of the injured. We don’t have a bug medic with us yet, one’s on the way, M’faloo.”
Rada nodded once, turned around, and almost collided with a large and all together too clean captain. “Easy Hairball, I— shit, what the fur did you roll in?” Yori dar Ohrkan backed up two steps, eyes beginning to shift to red.
“Blood and evil,” she snarled. “Want some of it?”
“Stand down, Captain Ni Drako.” Yori held her eyes with his, as if trying to calm her by pure force of will. “Mission accomplished, stand down.”
“I concur, Capt. Dar Ohrkan,” Major Soliman Szilliar walked up, pointing to where the medic needed to go. “Report.”
“Blue Four called that the former prisoners were not moving and clearing the mouth of the tunnel. I came, assessed the situation, determined that there was a lack of danger at the moment, and was able to move some of the Likari, but only laterally, not forward. Even so, it cleared enough space that more were able to exit, including a female named Luchs. She is, ah, a spiritual leader of sorts, sir, powerful projective empath, more powerful than I am, self taught.”
“She’s the pale one?”
“Yes, sir. She began directing the others and the group was beginning to move in good order when I sensed an attack in the tunnel.”
Szilliar frowned, as much as his blunt muzzle allowed. “You sensed. You had your shields down.”
“Yes, sir. I responded to the attack and found ten Ouzga, six of them pain-masters and one mating queen. The attacked my men and I as well as the Likari.”
“Close quarters.” Rada did not answer the statement. Maj. Szilliar sniffed, then snorted, clearing his nose. “Very close quarters. You and your men are dismissed to go get cleaned up before we—” He stopped, staring over Rada’s shoulder. “What in the name of Kilwor’s rings?”
Rada pivoted and saw all the Likari staring at the sky once more. Luchs had one foreleg raised, and Rada saw the emotional energy, so concentrated and strong that it neared visible light. She looked up, higher, and caught sight of the planetary sun’s light reflecting off one of the transports, making it blaze like a new star. Rada’s jaw sank open and she lowered her shields.
The pure joy of hope made real brought tears to her eyes. She wanted to drink it, to bathe in it, to let it seep into every pore and fur follicle and dark spot in her being. Instead she raised her shields before awe became intoxication. “That, sir, is five generations of prayers and hopes being answered. Answered by one bright star.” She turned back to the others. “They worship the stars.”
* * *
Capt. Ni Drako stood at attention before Col. Ingwe Adamski, Major Ahriman Gupta, and Major Szilliar. “You violated a direct order by going unshielded, Ni Drako,” Major Gupta rumbled.
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Any justification or reason why we should not penalize you appropriately?”
Several things came to mind, but those were excuses, not reasons. “Sir, no, sir.”
“Sirs, her sensing the Ouzga attacking the Likari in violation of the peace agreement prevented a massacre and stampede,” Major Szilliar reminded his superiors. “And she placed herself in jeopardy to protect them.”
Maj. Gupta rubbed the base of his nasal horn. Silence. At last he and Szilliar looked to Col. Adamski.
The orange and purple avian stood up and extended wing-like arms, holding his hands out. Rada risked a glance and saw the palms dead level. She locked her eyes on the bulkhead once more. What does that mean?
“Balance the scales, for good and for ill,” Adamski recited. He lowered his arms. “The save exactly counterbalances the disobedience. Both shall be on your record, Captain, and while you receive no punishment, you also receive none of the bonus given to the rest of Blue Section.” He stalked around the table and put his short beak so close to her nose that she could see every tiny hair-feather around the base. “Do not go shields down, is that clear?”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
He clicked the beak twice, straightened up and pointed at the door. “Dismissed.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” She saluted and fled so fast that she left a small cloud of black fur in her wake.
Once the door slid closed, Adamski turned to the staff officers. “I’m getting soft in my old age, Ahriman. I should have gutted her and used her entrails as office decorations.”
Gupta winced. He’d seen Adamski administer capital punishment exactly twice, and that was two times too many. He still woke up in a blind panic when he dreamed about the exec
utions. “No comment, sir.”
Szilliar’s forked tongue flicked in and out as he rubbed under his chin, just above the tight tunic collar. “Her impetuosity will be the death of her.”
“If it were only her, I wouldn’t mind so much, damn it.” Adamski snapped his beak twice more. “She’d outrank you, Soliman, if she’s stop running to the sound of guns and screams.”
“And getting into bar fights, and leading the other officers astray, and poking her nose into striped-stingers’ nests, and,” he subsided as Adamski raised one hand, fending off the rest of the most recent list.
Szilliar raised one finger for attention. “Sirs, how long does her species live?”
The two senior officers looked at each other and blinked. “No idea,” Gupta stated.
“Wanderers can live thousands of years, or so it is said, and I believe it. I’ve never dealt with one of those Trader creatures who was not at least three thousand standard years old. They are not even considered for independent Trades until they are over a thousand.” Adamski’s feathers ruffled. “Fewmets. Ni Drako’s only a hundred and ninety-four. By Wanderer standards she’s barely out of the egg.”
“By Feltari[*] standards she’s dead, since they only live a hundred Feltana years, a hundred and twenty at the absolute outside.” Gupta wiggled the stubby digits on his fleshy forefoot. “If we average the two, Ni Drako’s still a child.”
Szilliar’s tongue flicked again. “Which is no excuse, sirs, but it suggests that her, ah, propensity for action before thought is perhaps less amenable to traditional disciplinary correction than might be assumed.”
“Not seeing any of the very generous bonus paid to the rest of Blue Section might get the point across, sir,” Gupta suggested.
“A new star will appear in the sky before—” Adamski pointed a thin, claw-like finger toward the junior major. “Shell it, Szilliar, I saw that smile. Dismissed before I change my mind and the Scales rebalance.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” Szilliar departed almost as quickly as Ni Drako had.
“Shell shards, she’s contagious.” But Adamski smiled as he snapped his beak one last time.
* * *
[*] Author’s note: Only Col. Adamski and Yori know that Rada is not part Feltari, but part Ka’atian. The others assume she’s a Feltari hybrid.