by Chad Huskins
Lyokh sidestepped, and caught the wrist of one of the kid’s outstretched arms. He performed a sapu sweep of the kid’s feet. The kid floundered in the air and slammed hard against the deck. He made a humph! sound as the wind went out of him.
The crowd that had gathered let out a collective “Ooooo,” as the private struggled to stand.
Lyokh offered a hand. The private hesitated, then took it. For a second Lyokh thought he might charge again, because of the look in his eye. Instead the kid smiled and said, “Nice job, doyen.”
“You’re strong as all hell,” Lyokh panted. “Really rung my hands through the hilt with each hit. What was your name again?”
“Artemis,” the kid said, wiping his brow. He had a strange accent, every syllable enunciated and proud. A well-educated kid.
“Where you from?”
“The Artemis System.”
“You’re kidding. Artemis of Artemis?”
The kid laughed. “That’s me, doyen,” he said, giving the bruise that was developing on his temple a testing touch.
As they talked, they walked over to a bench where fresh towels had been laid by service bots. Lyokh grabbed a towel and tossed it to the Tamer captain, then wiped his own arms down.
“If I recall correctly, the Artemis System fell to the Brood what, twenty, twenty-five years ago?” Lyokh asked.
Artemis nodded.
“You have any family make it out of there, Artemis of Artemis?”
“Nah, they’re all dead.” He said it dismissively, running a hand through his sweating blonde hair. It was a typical response. People got used to their plight. Everyone everywhere was dying. Why cry about it? What makes my suffering so special? Oblivion awaits. That kind of thing.
“Sorry to hear it.”
“It’s all right,” the captain said, taking a sip of water from a bottle. “Least I made it out.”
That sounded like small consolation, but then, that would have to do.
Lyokh said, “Did you join up just to leave home?”
“More or less,” Artemis said. “I saw those propaganda vids—you know, the ones with the Knights of Sol, talking about how you could be a part of Man’s resurrection, see the galaxy, that thing? I saw those and I wanted so bad to be a Knight Companion.” He snorted. “I guess it was lucky I wasn’t, right? I heard most of them were annihilated before their drop ship even touched down, and the rest of them were fried by some kind of microwave beam from a turret high up on the hive. Microwaved inside their armor. Bad way to go.” Artemis shook his head, then pointed at Lyokh. “Where are you from, doyen?”
“Place called Timon. Ever heard of it?”
The captain shook his head.
“It’s a moon. Nothing special. The system it’s in is so small I don’t think even the Brood care to look into it.” He chuckled, and looked at the tattoo on the kid’s right bicep. A red wyrm, entangled with the golden seal of Second Fleet. “How long you been a Tamer?”
Artemis looked at his tattoo. “I guess it’s going on nine years now. It’s a family tradition. Same with you, I expect?”
It wasn’t a bad guess, seeing as how one in five of the human race was now involved in the military in some way, even if it was to produce weapons on foundry worlds. Few people came from garden worlds to fight in bloody wars—people from those worlds tended to stay on those worlds, and who could blame them? So yes, Artemis of Artemis’s guess was a good one. But it was wrong.
Lyokh sighed and took a seat, laying the practice sword across his lap. “No. I left Timon out of boredom. Nothing there but Christers and Buddhists, all of them farmers. Some Harbingers showed up one day when I was maybe ten years old. They opened up a chapter there. Talked up the Fall of Man, and that really went over well with some of the Christers, who believe the End Times are always a-comin’. A weird cult formed out of those groups coming together—Harbinger Christers! Sounds crazy, I know, but it happened.”
“Sounds like a volatile situation,” said Artemis, taking another drink.
“Things did turn dangerous, but the Republican Army only showed up once they got wind of the human sacrifices.”
Artemis’s blue eyes widened. “Shit, doyen. Did you…?”
“Nah, I never saw anyone get killed. Not from the cult, anyway. They had formed a hybrid, a cult that believed in the Harbingers’ message, and yet sacrificed members through crucifixion. The Harbingers took the corpses in their starships and flew them to Brood worlds, using the raw materials of their bodies as offerings. But like I said, I never saw any of that. I only saw the Harbingers getting mulched by the Army’s cannons when they tried to disperse a riot, and the slag of their ships falling through the atmosphere when the Navy obliterated them.”
Lyokh stared into space as he peeled back the years, thinking on that time. That all happened ninety-three years ago. Seemed like yesterday. Seemed like an eternity. Seemed like a dream he’d had, then woke to find himself here…
“Sorry to hear that, doyen.”
He looked up at Artemis. “Aw, who doesn’t like a good cleansing once in a while? I’m sure the Harbingers didn’t mind.”
They both laughed. Gallows humor. It was catching from Meiks.
“You miss it?” Artemis asked.
“You mean home?”
The captain nodded.
“Might sound weird, but…no,” said Lyokh. “No, I don’t. I can’t explain it, even to myself. I mean, there are good memories of those days, me being oblivious to everything—not just what was going on on Timon, everything. And there’s a certain joy in such innocence, isn’t there?” He smiled whimsically. “And there’s so much burden that comes with letting go of ignorance. But I have to tell you, Artemis of Artemis, I don’t regret it a bit. I’d rather know I’m dying than pretend I’m not. I’d rather understand the Fall of Man, and the permanence it brings, than live in a fantasy like the folks on Timon, or like those people on garden worlds do.”
“Careful there, doyen. You’re starting to sound like a Harbinger.”
“Fuck the Harbingers, too,” Lyokh said. “Harbingers are quitters, and nobody likes a fucking quitter.”
They both laughed.
“You want another round?” asked Artemis, gesturing at the sparring circle.
“Ah, shit, I knew you were gonna say that. I swear, you young bucks…Is that why you’re talking to me, to butter me up for the slaughter?”
“Might be, doyen. Might be.”
Lyokh picked up his sword, and slapped his thighs. “Well, shit, let’s get this over with, then. Oblivion awaits.”
They had just started their match, giving each other’s blade one testing tap each, when Lyokh heard someone call out for him. “Hey, handsome!” He turned and found Heeten strolling up to him. “Just got word from med bay. Your boy’s awake.”
Lyokh brightened. “Durzor?”
Heeten nodded. “I was just in there, checking on some friends. Med bots are crowding over him, but he’s awake and asking to speak to any survivors from Gold Wing. I figured you two would like to have a chat?”
Lyokh nodded, then looked over at the Tamer. “Another time, Artemis of Artemis.”
“You know where to find me, doyen.”
SPECIAL WEAPONS OFFICER Ulrik Durzor looked like a man encased inside a painful torture device. His body had been crushed beneath the wrath of multiple octopus-things, his body pasted together with synthware, cyberware, and cleaned of infections by nanite gel flushes.
Durzor’s arms were inside steel sarcophagi, his chest had multiple tubes running into it, and his legs had a network of steel pins of various sizes, all sticking jaggedly out of him. His face was swollen. A nutrient cord was attached to his hip. The steady beeping of his vitals filled the tiny room, where he and five med bots had been crammed to make space for the other wounded.
When Lyokh stood over him, he must not have been able to mask his surprise, because Durzor smiled and said, “I’m still prettier than you.”
T
hat got Lyokh to crack a smile. “You’re getting a medal,” he said. “I said they shouldn’t, since you didn’t do a damn thing but get your ass kicked.”
Durzor guffawed, and then winced as the pain set in. “You son of a bitch!” he coughed. “What happened to you down there? Something must’ve happened to your head for you to have a sense of humor.” He shook his head. “Imperator’s Medal of Valor, eh? That’s a joke. There’s no Imperator left.” He let out a quivering sigh, and frowned. “They’re saying I’m not going to walk again, Lyokh.”
Lyokh nodded solemnly. “The medic outside brought me up to speed.”
“Not enough regens to go around. At least, not enough to waste on someone who probably won’t recover enough to be a fighter again. But hell, if the Knights of Sol could be so easily wiped out, I think it says a lot that I’m even alive. Oblivion awaits,” he said sagely.
“Oblivion awaits,” Lyokh agreed.
Durzor looked at him. “I’m only alive because of you.”
Lyokh shrugged it off. “I’m only doyen because of you. We’ll call it even.”
Durzor smirked, wincing in pain, as if just that little motion caused him immeasureable pain. He moved his neck as much as he could, looking down at his ruined body. He chuckled. “Damn Brood. Fuck ’em.”
Lyokh nodded. “Yeah.”
They chatted for a bit, going over what was in store in the next few weeks. Durzor expressed regret that he would not be able to help in the days ahead. He said he was afraid he was bound to be a useless cripple. Lyokh assured him that whatever he needed, he had but to ask.
They discussed the upcoming Phanes campaign, and Lyokh mourned that all of Gold Wing could not be present to assist. He said that Lucerne’s death left a major vacuum in leadership that could not be filled. Durzor told Lyokh that he would endure, just like always. When Lyokh said he wasn’t so sure, Durzor reminded him of what he had accomplished inside the Kennit hive.
“You kicked ass down there, brother.” Durzor looked at him, in a more serious way than he ever had before. In all their years of fighting together, Durzor’s face had never looked so honest and fervent. “You kicked the shit out of those things. They pounded you into the dirt, but you kept going.”
“I got lucky.”
“Of course you did, but luck’s always a part of it. We both know that. Only idiots who don’t know anything think otherwise. We train our asses off just so we can get to a place where we take advantage of luck, that’s all it is.”
Lyokh nodded.
“You taking the promotion?”
Lyokh looked up at him, surprised.
“You’re an idiot if you don’t,” Durzor said.
“How did you know about that?”
“Reyes came by. Said the Visquain had talked to you about it. He asked my opinion on the matter. Said he asked the others, too.”
“What did you tell him?”
“ ‘That dumbass, Lyokh? Man hasn’t got the sense God gave an Isoshi’s dick!’ ” Durzor made himself laugh, winced, and cursed himself for it. “Then I told him that they were idiots for not seeing it before. We all were. You always had a coolness to you, Lyokh. Everybody else is either a gossip, a bullshitter, or a coward when it comes to fighting. You? You don’t gossip or bullshit. You just train. And relax in your bunk. And focus on what’s ahead. And the way you took command when everyone else was dying…shit, that’s some real hero stuff there.”
“If it wasn’t me, it would’ve been somebody else.”
“And now look, you’re acting all humble, and you’re going to make me puke! All those gifts wasted on such an ugly fucking face.”
Lyokh gave a half smirk. “You really think I should take it?”
“Here’s the thing, you don’t really have a choice, the way Reyes tells it. But if you don’t choose to do it, on your own, and just let it be thrust upon you, then you’re fucked. Can’t be any kind of leader if you haven’t made the decision in your heart to lead.” He sighed. “You’re going to be leading people from here on out, Lyokh. Whether you’re effective or not, depends on you.”
Lyokh hove a sigh, realizing the merit of Durzor’s words.
“Just give it some thought,” Durzor said. “Now, get out of here, there’s a nurse that comes to change my bedpan about this time, and I don’t want you ruining the special bond she and I have been developing with the presence of your ugly fucking face.”
LYOKH WAS SITTING on the edge of his bunk inside his billet, with his rifle stripped down, laid out in pieces on the tiny desk in front of him. His hands plucked the pieces and gave each one a good cleaning. The gas chamber was looking a little crisp, probably needed replacing. It would work for now. The auto-targeting gyrator could also use an adjustment. He would put in an order to the fab room, but he imagined that would take a couple of weeks, and by that time they might already be at Phanes.
The L-130 Fell rifle was seventy centimeters long, eighty if its stock was extended to sniper configuration. Its outer shell was made of a titanium aluminide alloy, but its insides were mostly made of high-impact, temperature-resistant plastics. All its electronics were rad-hardened and tightly encased. The electronic pulse actuator, free-floating rails, and rotating breech all looked fine. He still wasn’t satisfied, and so re-cleaned each piece.
The wall panels shook all around him.
Lord Ishimoto was still pushing through space in its FTL bubble, her walls trembling slightly at all hours, as though she was afraid of the upcoming battle. But Lyokh did not imagine her as being afraid. She was a tough old girl, and he imagined she was quivering with anticipation. Bloodlust.
Once the parts were cleaned for a second time, he started reassembling the rifle, slowly, piece by piece. Tasks like these were meditative for him. Kept his mind busy. He could still hear the screams from Kennit, no matter how many light-years were put between them. Durzor’s words kept coming back to him, as did the words of the Visquain. He hadn’t spoken with Reyes, but Durzor made it sound like Reyes was all for Lyokh’s promotion, too. He felt hemmed in.
The Visquain had not been lying when they said he did not really have a choice.
So do like Durzor said, he told himself. Hoy up and make it work.
Lyokh glanced down at the stack of slinkplasts he had on his bunk. Intel reports on Widden, and a profile on a woman named Thessa Zane den Uta, Wardeness of Widden, and Keeper of the Phanes System. Also the High Priestess of a cult that followed a strange doctrine called Mahlism. An alien religion, adopted by the humans of Widden some eight hundred years ago, and based on the fear of a single malevolent god named Mahl.
He leafed through the sheets, found only images of the High Priestess covered head to toe in green, blue and red shawls, her face concealed by a black mask without lips, only eyeholes and etched with strange designs. Priestess Zane, as she was known, had many titles. Speaker for Mahl. The Prophet of Phanes. Scrivener of Souls. Arch-sorceress Supreme of the Faith.
Next, Lyokh looked at the three-dimensional topographical map of Widden’s continents, its rolling countrysides and its well-planned, well-built cities. Vast swaths of green lands and jungles. A true garden world.
Without thinking about it, Lyokh disassembled his ZS-707 pulser. Then he opened the drawer of his desk and took out the scroll. He held it in his hands for a while, turning it over and over, his hands running across the grooves and channels that some unknown alien artist had carved into it eons before. He still had not turned it over to PI yet, and so far no one had ordered him to. Too many other things going on, he assumed.
Lyokh used his room’s computer to pull up LOG, and searched for images taken of known Stranger sites. Since no alphabet had ever been discovered for them, he couldn’t use a translator program to cross-reference the scroll’s runes with anything of theirs. He checked images of so-called “Worshipper” sites, as well, and found little more. The meaning of the runes would probably remain forever unknown to him.
But what was one more mystery
in a galaxy filled with them?
Lyokh thought about Durzor. Thought about all his dead battle-brothers and -sisters. Thought about how short life was, compared to the uncaring and sweeping cosmos.
And he thought about the promotion the Visquain had pushed on him.
Oblivion awaits.
By the time he had reassembled his pulser, his mind was made up.
THAT NIGHT, LYOKH’S dreams were lucid. He heard discordant screams, and felt hands crawling all over him. He jerked, fighting them off. The world he saw was made of light, with pits of darkness that sucked him in if he stared too long.
Echoes…
Sourcless winds pushed across his face. The sound of huge leathery wings flapping. And heat against his face. The smell of sulfur and choking ash…
Echoes…
The dream coalesced into something more tangible. He stood in a field of tall red grass that whispered conspiratorially all around him. Above him was a vast sky of blue and pink, with clouds that rippled over a chain of smoldering volcanoes in the distance. The sky was also dominated by six key characters: two stars, one blue and one white, three distant moons, and a giant disk of debris, which formed a planetary ring. Lyokh was standing on some world he had never visited, his mind sketching in the details from moment to moment.
The field of grass undulated in the sourceless wind. He thought he heard voices…
Echoes…
There came the flapping of wings, and a deep, deep grumbling. He felt it in his chest more than he heard it. A shadow fell over him. Fear began to rise him, fear borne of uncertainty and dread. All around him, animals that he had never seen before went running past him, some of them screeching in terror.
He turned and looked up.
The wyrm’s mouth opened to swallow him. It was massive. Too large to be either a crodic or an anguis, its wingspan much larger than even a hatchling’s or a coil’s. It was either at the serpens- or vipera-stage of its growth, still not fully grown, but easily three hundred feet in length. Its purple scales rippled and quivered, each one pulsating with its own life, with sharp electrical charges crackling just beneath the surface and setting its squamous body aglow. The rough leather of its wings thundered with each flap, its tail coiling and uncoiling like it had a life all its own. It gave a full-throated roar as it stretched out its long neck, and dove towards him.