by Yronwode
“While simultaneously, their intelligence agents in the Xirong settlements are trying to find out which phalange might have him,” Kitaen responded. “Don’t you find it curious? The Midians regard the Xirong as savages. And yet, their deference to the Xirong is absolute.”
Alkema agreed. “It’s almost as though they trust the Xirong more than us.” Kitaen cautioned. “The Midians are our allies, we must remember that.
However, we must also recognize that they place their own well-being above ours.”
“You sound like them,” Alkema argued, frustrated.
“It matters less to our situation whether what they think is the truth or just the truth as the Midians perceive it,” Kitaen intoned patiently. “We will have to be very sly in order to make progress with them. We will have to go it alone, if necessary.”
“Which won’t be easy,” Alkema said. “We have no ships, no ground vehicles, and precious little knowledge of the lay of the land.” Trajan Lear had not stopped staring at the wrecked Aves. “We have one Shriek left,” Lear told them, referring to the Accipiter that had been recovered from Zilla’s crash site, and which had been restored to operational status. “We could use it for surveillance. It’s far superior to any systems they have.”
“Their ruling council have refused us permission to do so,” Kitaen answered.
“Well, maybe they don’t need to know,” Trajan shot back. “The holoflage still works.”
“We may need that, so let’s hold it in reserve,” Kitaen suggested. “For now, I believe it is imperative we understand better the relationship between the Midians and the Xirong. It may provide us with leverage. I’ve sent Tactical Specialist Zim to one of Xenthe’s libraries. She has an interest in history and exo-sociology, and may be able to provide some insight.”
“Have her also find out about the Kariad,” Alkema added. “The Kariad did something that shifted the paradigm on this planet. I think that’s a big part of why the Midians don’t trust us.”
Yronwode – Xiyyon - Temple of the Starcross
Meek led Eddie into a chamber of the palace he had not seen before, which was not all that surprising because he had spent most his days on the planet confined to a suite of apartments on the sixth floor. This chamber was located in the base of the palace’s prayer tower, a tall obelisk that occupied its Eastern corner. The chamber was perfectly round, as large as a church and exceedingly beautiful, every surface polished to a high sheen. Candles encircled it from five ledges high above.
Even Eddie was impressed. “Kumba Yah!”
“Kumba Yah, indeed,” Meek whispered. “Only the Pontifex, the Archonexs, and a very rare selected visitor are allowed into this Sacred Place.”
“And the cleaning crew,” Eddie added. He knew enough about Archonexs and Pontifexes to know they would never leave it themselves to clean candle soot off the shining, polished surfaces themselves.
In the center of the room was an altar, about three times the height of a man, polished silver, with three arms that extended upward and met in the center, forming a kind of tripod. Meek stretched out his arm over the altar in the center of the room and a lightshow began. Meek through a switch. Multi-colored light emerged from the altar in a fountain, dappling brilliantly as it poured over the walls and floor. It was dazzlingly beautiful, almost liquid in appearance.
“Whoever designed this place must have been a pharmaceutical hobbyist,” Eddie whispered reverently.
“It is a smaller replica of the Santorum in the Starcross Palace on Beta Ceres,” Meek explained.
“What’s it for?” Eddie asked.
“Primarily, it is a place to meditate and receive revelation, if the Allbeing is of a mind to give such.” Meek opened a small compartment in the base of one of the three arms. He reached inside and pulled out a crystal-white sphere, twice as large as a man’s fist. “This is an orb of polished moon crystal from the moon of Ceres Beta, representing our sacred church.”
Eddie told him it was pretty. Carefully, Meek placed the orb back into its chamber, then proceeded to the next arm, from which he pulled a sphere of pure gold.
“This sphere of pure gold represents purity, and our connection to the universe, because gold is only formed in the hearts of supernovas.” Eddie reached for it, but Meek snatched it away. “Only once you have been sanctified as Pontifex may you touch the spheres, except for this next one.” Meek opened the door on the next arm and pointed inside, but Eddie could see nothing. Or, maybe there was something there, since the light in the room seemed to be faintly infiltrating the space, making a faint purple glow around… a perfect sphere of nothing.
“The orb of dark matter represents sin,” Meek intoned ominously. “Touch it, and you will die.”
“How did it get into the chamber?” Eddie asked.
Meek closed and locked the door. “I know, Eddie, that you do not respect the sacred and holy mysteries of our church. That is well. But you have been chosen to fulfill a sacred duty, and you would do well to at least be silent on our beliefs until you have more understanding of them.”
“I just don’t get how you can turn your entire church over to me, and let me do whatever I want with it,” Eddie challenged him. “It meeks no slagging sense.” Meek took a deep breath and drew his hands together prayerfully. “I have faith in the wisdom of my Pontifex. If she chose you, it was because she was inspired by the Allbeing to choose you. That is enough for me.”
“But it isn’t enough for me,” Eddie shot back, and thought it was a quite clever remark. As he did so, the lightshow stop, and the candles flickered, as though blown by an unseen wind.
Meek waited for it pass, then led Eddie back into the corridor, intending to lead him to his chambers. “Did you know I am a direct descendant of Pontifex Wise No. 1.” Before Eddie could answer, Meek answered for himself. “Of course you don’t. It’s not that unusual, there are many in the city who can claim him as an ancestor. It was Pontifex Wise No. 1 who founded the Sacred City of Xiyyon and urged the Redeemers to gather here. However, I have studied him and his history since I was a young boy. He lived in very perilous times. In the time since the Kariad left, I have watched the parallels unfold between my time and his.
“He saw that the Xirong were being … overwhelmed by their wickedness, and instead of blaming their own wickedness for their suffering, they blamed the Redeemers. He could see that there was only one possible outcome for this rising cycle: that they would soon turn against the Redeemers and kill us… all of us. He urged his people to leave. Those who did, survived. Those who did not, suffered horribly.” Meek turned, and fixed Eddie with a serious look. “It’s happening again, Your Holiness, but we don’t have anywhere else to go this time. You have to be the one to turn back what’s coming. That’s why the Allbeing sent you to this planet. And you will do it, whether you like it or not.”
Yronwode – Midian Security Base One: The Barracks
On the nights when they did not go into the city, the Pegasan warfighters hung around the barracks, playing card games, eating the wretched Midian food and watching the idiotic Midian two-dimensional entertainment channels.
Johnny Rook had made good enough friends with some Midian soldiers to have stories to tell, stories much more entertaining than the predictable fiction-dramas and comedies offered by the telecasts. Tonight, he was telling another one:
“OK, so, you’ve got this caravan of Midian military vehicles, heavily armored, made its way down the highway between Nimali and Den-Al-Goor. Suddenly, the first truck in the convoy explodes. Just explodes out of no where. They think one of the prisoners inside set himself up as a blood bomb.”
“What’s a blood bomb,” asked one of the other warfighters.
Johnny Rook smiled the way a warrior smiles when he’s about to tell of something gruesome. “Apparently, there’s some kind of nano-technology that can turn your blood into an explosive. When it reaches critical, you go boom, and take out everything within a four meter radius.”
“Kumba Yah!” said several of the men.
“Kumba Yah for sure. So this guy I talked to, Corporal Mercy, is four vehicles back from the one that exploded. He hears his CO yell ‘Convoy halt!’ … like they haven’t halted already because the lead vehicles a pile of wreckage … and ‘Get me air support. We’re sitting ducks for a headhunter ambush.’
“Did he really say ‘sitting ducks?’” a female tactical technician asked. “There aren’t any ducks on this planet, that’s why I ask.”
Rook was unperturbed that the rhythm of his story had been broken. “He said something like that. So, anyway, Corporal Mercy has to get out and tend to the wounded in the first truck… the one that exploded. There were four guys in it, three are dead, and the other one’s in bad shape. They know there are hostiles in the area, but they’re trapped between two high ridges, like they were set up for an ambush.”
“They didn’t know where the hostiles were?” asked another Warfighter.
“Neg, Their battlegear doesn’t have sensor nets built into it,” Rook explained.
“Yikes,” said the warfighter.
“My guy doesn’t wait around,” Rook continued. “50 Caliber guns deploy from the roof of the armored vehicles. He jumps on top of his and begins pounding the canyon tops with artillery.
“The problem is, the headhunters aren’t in the canyon tops. They’re on the ground in the bushes, and they open fire with rockets.” Curses and whistles went through the assembled warfighters. “Za, but listen, the headhunters aim isn’t so good.
They fire off four missiles, and every damb one of them misses. In fact, two of the headhunter squads were, like, directly across from each other. They both aimed at the same truck, and ended up taking each other out.”
This brought raucous, military style laughter. “So, my guy sees this, and he sees a missile shoot right past the front of his truck. He swings the gun around to where the missile came from, and empties his entire magazine into the brush. Later, when they checked the brush, they didn’t find any, but the ground was so chewed up they think the headhunters must have totally disintegrated. Anyway, they hold off for an hour until they finally get air support. But by that time…” A few meters away, Max Jordan was asleep in his bunk. He was having an intensely realistic dream about making love to the blond and the brunette they had met at the café-tavern the night before.
In his dream, he was lying on his back, and the blonde had already mounted him. She straddled his mid-section, and his erect manliness was buried deep in her warm, velvety femalehood. “Oh, yeah,” she moaned as she rode him. “Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah!” She said nothing else.
The naked brunette positioned herself on his bare chest, and began fondling the blonde girl’s breasts. Aroused, the only noises from her lips were honeyed sighs that hung in the sultry night air.
The women carried on this way for quite some time, with Max having to do little but lay back and enjoy it. They changed positions, so that the brunette was riding him, and Max found it passing odd that they didn’t just instantaneously change places, as was typical for dreams, but instead he saw them maneuvering around each other and felt himself re-entering the brunette. Once inside, though, the sensation was exactly the same.
And then a third woman joined in, the telecaster from the Midian information broadcast. She was nude, her milk-white breasts glowed like pale moons. “And now for the weather. Tonight will be unseasonably hot and wet, with a distinct chance for things to get hotter and wetter before morning.”
The other women moved aside, and the telecaster insisted that Max take her from behind. She was tighter than the others, and Max found himself simultaneously feeling what he was doing to her and watching himself do it to her, as she calmly continued reading the news. “In other news, I got plowed by a virile young warrior from the planet Bodicea, who is now turning into a Sapphirean. If this had been actual sex, he would have impregnated me with a Sapphirean baby.” Before long, he and all three women were tangled together, and he could not even tell whose cervix he was penetrating when he at last climaxed so intensely his entire body quaked.
In the barracks, his eyes snapped open. It was dark outside. Half the adjacent bunks were occupied with sleeping warfighters. He was panting and out-of-breath, and tried hard to stifle it, lest he wake any of them up.
He sensed someone was lying next to him, and he turned, but his bunk was empty. Perhaps it had been a residual sensation since the dream. But it felt so real.
Then, Caliph whispered to him excitedly.
“So, that’s what sex feels like. Wow!”
Yronwode – The Wilderness of Howling Zeal.
The funeral of a Great Chieftain among the Xirong typically involved the body of the deceased being carried through the streets, wrapped in a shroud, hoisted on the sturdy shoulders of men, and passed around like a beachball at an Arcadian Music Festival.
Sometimes, when the Great Chieftain had met his end at the end of a Midian military strike, his body (or what was left of it) would be sliced into pieces for distribution to the people, as a reminder of his willingness to embrace martyrdom in resistance to the Theocrats. Often, riots would break out, as the body was ripped to shreds by eager Tsi Bai, wanting a piece of the remains.
Fortunately, K-Rock was not considered a Great Chieftain. His body was simply wrapped in a shroud and laid atop a pyre on a metal rack. Only a few of the Xirong from the city of Izzan-Al-Izzan had turned out, and they stood away from the others.
“Your Great Warlord didn’t turn out to be so much,” Blunt Hardcheese sneered at Bang, as the last of the petroleum distillate was poured onto the sticks at the base of the pyre. He had already retaken his given name – Voorgarth, and was planning to have Blast Thickneck (a.k.a. Serpantor) secretly murdered. Serpantor planned to do the same to him. And most of the rest of K-Rock’s lieutenants were plotting to kill either or both of them, but not in so obvious a way as to draw the LIs. That had been K-Rock’s mistake.
“Light the fire,” Voorgarth ordered. “Let’s finish this thing.” Bang stepped forward. “I would like to say a few words.”
“Shut up, horse,” Thickneck growled.
She ignored him and spoke anyway. Her voice a peculiar blend of mourning and madness. “He was powerful. He killed Boros, he destroyed the LI’s, you saw his sign in the sky. And with him, we would have burned the cities of the Theocrats and
piled their bones into monuments! We would have turned their temples into
charnel houses, and their corporate buildings into temples of death! We would
have made them beg for mercy at our feet, and then cut off their lying, cheating,
stealing heads! He was a great man.”
“Now, he’s dead,” Voorgarth said. “Where’s his powers now? No where. That’s where.”
“He still gots his stick,” Serpantor added, they had been unable to pry the battlestaff from K-Rock’s cold, dead hands.
“Fire up!” Voorgarth ordered. The two torch-bearers unceremoniously pressed their torches against the kindling gathered underneath. Coated with volatile hydrocarbons, the dry reeds burst into flame quickly enough to burn the hair from the torch-bearers’ forearms.
“Done,” Voorgarth stated. He turned to Serpantor, hoping to see a hint of the betrayal Serpantor was surely plotting, surely intending to seize the staff and claim the role of Chieftain for himself, but Serpantor’s face remained fixed on the fire, and his features set in stone.
Four of Voorgarth’s most loyal men were under orders to gut Serpantor if he attempted to grab K-Rock’s battle staff.
Four of Serpantor’s most loyal men were under orders to do the same to Voorgarth.
Two of these men were on both teams. Each of them, separately, had decided to let Voorgarth and Serpantor be killed, seize the battlestaff for himself, and declare himself Chieftain of the Izzan.
None of these scenarios played out, because to the shock and awe of all who gathered around the pyre, no sooner ha
d the fire been lit than the body atop the rack sat up.
“Ow! Ow! Ow! Hot! Hot! Hot!” K-Rock yelled, frantically ripping himself out of his funereal shroud, which was already beginning to smoke and burn. “Ouch! Ouch!
Ouch! Hot! Hot! Hot!”
He had been bound tightly in the shroud, and getting free of it was immensely difficult. Finally, he rolled himself off the pyre and fell painfully to the dusty ground.
“Help him!” Bang demanded. The bodyguards all looked to Voorgarth or Serpantor for guidance, and as a result did nothing. Bang ran forward and helped peel the burning shroud from his body.
“Ow!” K-Rock screamed. “Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!”
“Quickly, bring him water,” one of Serpantor’s men ordered.
Bang took out her canteen. “I have it.” She pressed it to his lips, and K-Rock drink greedily of the bitter water.
“I knew you would rise again,” she whispered to him. “They can no longer deny you. You have slain the LIs and survived their vengeance. You called down the stars themselves. Any who would deny you now are blasphemers, and you will strike them down with swift vengeance.”
K-Rock let loose with a coughing fit, and vomited some of the water back to the ground. Bang hissed urgently into his ear. “Voorgarth and Serpantor were plotting to seize your battlestaff and take over your leadership of the Izzan Phalange.”
“Who?”
“Blunt Hardcheese and Blast Thickneck… part of your inner circle.”
“Really,” K-Rock whispered back. “I knew I couldn’t trust those guys.”
“Yes,” she assured him. “You must kill them.”
K-Rock groaned. “Can’t someone else do it? I feel like hell.”
“You must do it now,” Bang whispered. “They’ll plot against you while you are weak.”
“Well, that would be the best time to plot against me, wouldn’t it?” K-Rock responded.