He drove an arrow into the ground with a translator attached and backed away. The cloak remained stationary in the air for a time, so he knew the gleason had not moved. If the cloak fell to the ground, they would know it was attacking. Hawke hovered high in the sky with weapons ready, but as always, there was no certainty he could stop an attack.
When the gleason moved, it chose a modest pace and the cloak remained in the air. Havlock and Galborae backed away, keeping the 50 meter separation constant. When the cloak reached the arrow, the arrow slid from the ground. The translator device moved through the air, then stopped, probably in position on the gleason’s ear.
“I have complied,” it shouted to them. “Why have you returned? We had an agreement.”
“You made an agreement with my enemy. I killed him. I am not bound by your agreement.”
The silence lasted a long time before a reply came from the gleason. “It changes nothing. Your presence makes our hunt even better. I accept your challenge.”
“The challenge will ultimately become intolerable to your people. I will soon have the resources to destroy all of you. I would rather find another solution.”
“Why? When we die, the rest of us share the ecstasy of dying just as we share in the ecstasy of a kill. Our greatest ecstasy comes from dying at the same time as our prey.”
Galborae and Havlock looked at each other in horror. Galborae was the first to grasp the full meaning of the gleason’s words. “He’s talking about gleasons who die slowly. They must all mentally share the experience. Tell him there can be no ecstasy from the death of one who dies instantly. We can change our tactics to kill each of them instantly.”
Havlock relayed the message.
The gleason waited a long time before replying. “There are too many of us.”
“I will bring more ships, more men. When I do, the killing will be instantaneous. There will be no ecstasy. That is your fate.”
More waiting before the gleason said, “Not my fate. My fate lies here, now.”
“I have another solution,” Havlock called. “Let me return all of you to your home world.”
This time the response came instantly. “Never! The ecstasy there is dark.”
Havlock’s eyes narrowed in thought. “I’m trying to understand what you want. You’re telling me that killing is the ultimate ecstasy and when one of you dies it provides ecstasy to the rest of you as it’s dying. With your mind link and all the killing here, your people must be in a constant state of ecstasy.”
“Our coming here has provided unlimited satisfaction.”
“Do you understand that to us living is the ultimate ecstasy?”
“You make no sense.”
“Then let me put it this way: what you find most pleasing we find most displeasing. Our goals are opposite each other.”
“Knowing that just improves the ecstasy.”
“Is there any way for us to coexist?”
“Yes. The longer your kind lives, the longer we share ecstasy. Fight us well.”
“Under your plan, your children will ultimately run out of people to kill. What then?”
“They will have to accept a lower level of ecstasy by taking other creatures.”
“And what happens when everything on the planet is dead except yourselves?”
“That is why we left our home world. It is not my problem.”
Havlock changed the subject. “Do all other gleasons on this world hear our conversation?”
“No. My thoughts are relayed from one to another but they do not reach across the seas.”
“Let them know I will fight you with every fiber of my being.”
“We hope for no less.”
Without warning the red cloak dropped to the ground. Havlock and Galborae fired stunners, and the ground erupted as the shuttle fired multiple weapons, but the gleason managed to dodge all of them. Fifty meters is not much separation when it’s a gleason on the other end. It fell upon them, and the ship could no longer intervene. Galborae took the first hit, a strike to the torso from the invisible creature. His uniform prevented the claws from piercing, but he went flying.
Havlock reacted the moment he saw the attack on Galborae, firing his blaster and taking a leg off the gleason. Limam was on it a moment later as it fell fully visible just a few feet away. It was back up in an instant, its teeth bared. It ripped Limam from its neck and flung her away, its neck spurting blood from her bite. Havlock fired again. His shot struck the gleason in the midsection and threw it backwards, but it was up again in an instant, leaping on its remaining leg and arms toward him. Havlock, the horror of what awaited him overwhelming rational thought, fired again from very close range, taking off an arm that rose with a knife, then the creature was on him. The creature clamped its teeth down on his upper arm, its three remaining arms wrapping around him with claws extended. He fell on his back and brought his feet to his chest, then kicked with everything he had, terror doubling his strength.
The gleason was too strong. It’s grip only tightened. It lowered its head and locked gazes with Havlock, then lifted its head to the sky howling in delight, savoring as it delayed the killing bite.
Suddenly Havlock was covered in blood. The gleason’s head flew away as Galborae’s sword separated it from its body. When Havlock came to his senses, he pushed the body away and rolled over, vomiting. Galborae lay collapsed beside him, gasping for breath with his inert sword laying beside him.
The shuttle settled beside them and a squad deployed around them. Sergeant Kori raced down the ramp, focusing first on Havlock. The blood threw her off for a time, but she completed a rapid assessment and called for two marines to place him on a floater. She went to Galborae, made another quick assessment, and loaded him onto another floater. Everyone was back inside the shuttle within a minute of its landing.
* * * * *
Havlock awoke in sick bay after three days in a tank. Atiana paced beside his bed, unaware that he was awake. He studied her through narrowed eyes for a time, then said, “Your Majesty.”
She spun around, a hand reaching out to him, then she froze. The hand slowly dropped to her side as she replied, “Sky Lord.” Her back straightened in formality, but her eyes danced between alarm and relief.
He studied her, then he reached an arm out to her.
She took the few steps to the side of his bed and reached for his hand, her body language softening when they touched. “I was told you were alive, but I feared you might not awaken.”
“I’m sorry to have worried you so.”
“The choice to worry is mine. What you did was stupid.”
His eyebrows rose. “Maybe. Maybe not. At least you know I’m committed.”
“Well, don’t be so committed. Besides, I was in the dream with you. I already knew you were committed.”
“In that case, I’ll try harder to worry you less.”
Her lips firmed for a moment, then she gave in and sat on the bed. “See that you do. I don’t want to have to train a new Sky Lord.”
“Then I’ll not disappoint you. How is Galborae?”
She dropped his hand, the lightness that had come into her eyes disappearing. “He’s in a tank. I’m told he’ll survive, but seven of his ribs are broken and there are other internal injuries. By rights, both of you should be dead. It was a foolish stunt.”
Havlock shook his head at the thought of seven broken ribs all at the same time, but the screaming from his wounded arm made him wonder if more time in a tank wouldn’t be a relief for him as well.
“Not a stunt, Your Majesty. Actually, we succeeded beyond our wildest imaginings. That said, I agree: we should both be dead.” He touched the cast on his left arm, the arm the gleason had bitten. “My uniform saved me.”
“It didn’t save you from broken bones. I’m told they’re partially crushed. Without your healers, your wound would be fatal. How can you possibly call that success?”
His lips firmed. “We learned from the gleason. We now u
nderstand what it’s doing and why it’s doing it. I need time to think about it, but because of what we learned, we’ll come up with a better strategy.”
She took his hand in both of her own, hands which were not the soft hands of a princess but the hard hands of a soldier. “You’ll not define that strategy on your own,” she said. “I will be a part of it. For the moment, though, you need to stand down.”
“Stand down? Hardly! I need to get back to work.”
She lifted his hand to her lips and, looking into his eyes, kissed it. She lowered her gaze to his hand and traced the lines on it with her fingertips, then raised blue eyes back to his own. “Gar,” she said softly, “I, too, have stood face to face with a gleason. I know what lies before you. The memory haunts me every single day.”
He’d been avoiding that recollection. Now he closed his eyes and relived the abject terror of the moment. It filled him to the brim, pushing out everything else. He stared into the gleason’s hungry eyes for as long as he could, its razor-sharp teeth preparing to rip his throat out, then he pushed the thought away. When he opened his eyes to her again, he felt her need to share the feeling. Too, he felt her sympathy.
“I have never felt the need to lean on anyone, but now . . . now I’m not so sure. I don’t know where this memory will take me,” he said.
“Let me help you find a place for it. For me, the memory became a gift: I now appreciate every extra day of life. For you, the memory has given you a claim on this world that is beyond any duty owed to your Queen. My world is now a part of you. Your fate is tied to ours.”
He considered her words, words whose meaning went deeper than she might have intended. When he’d first come to Tranxte, he had just come to another place with a problem to solve, albeit a problem orders of magnitude above the norm, and in some respects he had come to escape his past. In a surprisingly short but intense period of time, his ownership of the problems here had become personal and deep. The Empire would have a presence here for a long, long time. Lately he’d been wondering if there might be a place for him in that presence. Her words suggested he look harder.
He agreed with her—this world had become a part of him.
The thought helped him shove the horrible memory of the gleason to the side. He pulled her hand toward him and kissed it as he looked into her eyes. “Thank you, Your Majesty. Your words are a gift. I hear you.”
She blushed, then blushed harder when she saw in his eyes that he noticed the blush. She pulled her hand free and stood up. “So you’ll let your men do the fighting while you get your strength back?”
“No. People are dying every day. That’s the thought that haunts my sleep.”
She nodded sadly but didn’t stay that way for long. With her eyes gleaming in triumph, she said, “My world has definitely become a part of you.”
He liked the feeling her triumph gave him and paused to absorb it, letting the sense of those words fill him with wonder. His gaze stayed locked on hers as he said, “So I now answer to two queens?”
She blinked, her gaze shifting to everywhere in the room but to him. He watched with interest as she suddenly pulled herself together, clearly having reached a decision. She met his gaze squarely.
“Sky Lords might answer to queens, but not to this queen. We need a new arrangement.” She stepped to the bed and sat on it, reaching a hand out to caress his face. “Can I be Atiana to you? Even outside the dream?”
Their eyes remained locked on each other as he said, “It’s probably inappropriate, but in my mind I like to think of you as My Lady, Your Majesty.”
“Your Lady, huh?” She looked away for a moment, but only a moment. When her eyes met his again, they sparkled. “I like the sound of that. Challenges fill our future, some of them undoubtedly beyond horrible. Can we share them together?”
A warm feeling washed through him despite the screaming from his arm. “We can if you’ll share them with Gar, not just with the Sky Lord. My Lady.”
* * * * *
Galborae came out of the tank two weeks later. A day later Havlock called a staff meeting, right there in sick bay beside Galborae’s bed. Atiana, Turmae, and Havlock’s senior staff attended. Limam lay on the floor beside the bed. Havlock had given a lot of thought to what he had learned from the gleason. Galborae had been unconscious during most of that time so he would likely have less to offer the meeting, but Havlock had grown to depend on the knight’s judgement.
He began the meeting, saying, “Our fundamental purpose here has always been to establish tactics for the rest of our forces when they arrive. We’re still experimenting. Exterminating gleasons from our ships, even with a thousand ships, will not likely succeed. The planet is just too big. We see the gleasons with our life force scanners, but we cannot distinguish them from other life forms. Even if we could, a thousand ships still wouldn’t be enough, not when you factor in reproduction rates and the fact that the gleasons are a lot smarter than we gave them credit for. Whatever plan we come up with, I believe they’ll adapt and counter us.”
He looked up to the ceiling briefly, wondering if he should share his long-term thoughts on the matter. As he looked around the table, he knew these leaders would one day need to know, but not yet. He wanted them focused only on killing gleasons.
“The foundation of any tactics we formulate rests on variability. Our tactics have to change as the gleasons adapt to them, even before they adapt to them. The gleasons outsmarted us once and they’ll probably do it again, but I won’t accept that as an excuse. As leaders, it’s our place to stay ahead of them. Our goal is zero losses for our side.”
His commanders, all of them, shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. “I know,” he said. “We always factor losses into our deployments.”
“It’s not that, Gar,” said his second in command, Major Lebac. “We’re fighting gleasons here, not putting down an insurrection or arresting a few smugglers.”
He nodded. “I didn’t say there wouldn’t be losses, I’m saying I want us to aim for zero. Our latest caravans have drawn the gleasons away from Tricor. I want to expand that to other provinces and kingdoms and nations. Galborae and I learned from the gleason that we can do that. We just have to become more enticing targets than the locals, whether they be in castles, cities, villages, or on farms. If we can do that, we will have given the gleasons exactly what they want: the satisfaction of a challenging hunt even if that hunt results in their own death.
“They’re not stupid,” he added. “They’re not going to throw themselves on our guns without reward, so we need to let them succeed in their hunt on a regular basis.”
Stunned expressions met that statement. Havlock watched as the expressions turned to disbelief, then to confusion and anger.
Before the meeting had a chance to turn into a shouting match, he held up a hand. “I might have worded that poorly. We want the gleasons think they’ve been successful. I met with the Chief a few days ago. He’s cannibalizing some entertainment systems here on the transporter and putting together portable holographic projectors. The one gleason weakness we know about that we haven’t exploited is their poor vision. I want to see if we can fool them into going after images of soldiers, some of them riding gorlacs. If we’re good enough with our timing, the gleasons can attain all the ecstasy they want at no cost to us.” He paused, then added, “I’m open to other ideas.”
“Sir,” Major Ch’Nar said, “we need stingers and scooters, not wagons and gorlacs. We’re marines, not cowboys.”
Havlock shook his head, partly in sympathy. “Then give me a plan that takes them into consideration. It has to take relying on the locals’ help as well. We’ll never have enough marines to do the job by ourselves. And one more thing: any plan has to take the gleasons’ needs into consideration. We can’t just exterminate them—if we do it will force them to retaliate against the locals en masse—and I don’t think they’ll hunt us if we’re in tanks. I’d give anything to stop using caravans, but they’re the biggest
draw we’ve found. Besides, in the long run it’s important to restore commerce. Provinces and kingdoms will ultimately have to send out caravans whether we’re with them or not.”
“It won’t take the gleasons long to figure out which caravans we’re with, sir. They might avoid us.”
He shook his head. They might, but they’re just as likely to go after the hardest targets in order to achieve the most ecstasy.”
Galborae spoke up. “Everyone knows what happened to the caravan we lost. Traders will be reluctant to join you, and your marines don’t have the skills to run caravans by themselves.”
Atiana shook her head. “I’ve already met with two traders. Prices on their goods will bring record profits if they succeed, and both agreed to attempt runs under the right conditions. They’ll leave their families behind. Other traders will follow their example, I’m sure of it.”
Havlock added, “We learned the hard way that we can’t let the gleasons sneak up on us ever again. Time is the key to killing them. We do okay if we have time to sight them in. We can prevent another disaster like what just happened, but I believe the gleasons will adapt their tactics and start attacking in larger numbers if that’s what it takes to get to us. We’ll equip caravans with heavy weapons and their associated guidance systems. The heavy weapons will remain in reserve as a last resort or else the gleasons will wise up to us, but if our holographic projections are good enough, I think we’ll have more time to kill the gleasons, even if they come at us in droves.”
He hated what he had to say next. His gaze moved from marine to marine as he said, “We’re trained to kill when necessary, and that usually means quickly, efficiently, and humanely. I’m mandating a new approach here on Tranxte. As much as it goes against our natures, we’re going to hurt the gleasons and we’re going to draw that hurting out as long as possible before finishing them off. It’s what they want, what they need. If we fail to give them what they need, we fail Tranxte.”
Spirit of Empire 4: Sky Knights Page 24