Shanna

by Bill Nolan

  After Leida left, Jean Monier reported to the French Premier, who then met with an Empire representative, and explained what they had done. “Are you morons?” was his reply. “Here,” the Empire man said, “Use my phone to call and apologize before it’s too late.” The French Premier instead asked the Empire to support them. The Empire man stood, and said, “It would make no difference. You could not win, even if the Empire was helping you. You don’t understand, do you? It is impossible to defend a planet against ships unless the defenders have either superior ships or a lot more of them. Even then it’s a gamble, and we have neither. If you continue this, your entire people will be blotted out like a spill on the floor.”

  “Whatever else I may think of them, I never, ever allow myself to forget that the To’Ach’an are competent and willing warriors. They will not hesitate to attack you. You know that, don’t you? How many of your people are you willing to see killed to hold onto this woman? All of them?” He activated his phone. “I am declaring an emergency. Get all of our people out of all French territory, and away from all French citizens, as quickly as we can.”

  His warning was unnecessary. The To’Ach’an had just warned the Empire. They were given 30 minutes to vacate. Then the To’Ach’an attacked. In less than 20 minutes, they destroyed nearly every French military airplane on Earth. They also destroyed almost every French warship. They made no special effort to kill people, so most on the bases survived. Nevertheless, over 40,000 people died.

  The Premier was more than a bit shocked an hour later when Leida just walked into his office unannounced. He called for his bodyguards. Leida said, “Mr. Premier, you need to quit talking to dead people and listen to me. Did you think we would just let you steal Laura? She is Tovena, and we go to war to defend our own, as I told your representative, and as you have seen. We warned you, clearly, three times, that we would go to war over this, but you chose to ignore us. That was your decision, and the result is completely your responsibility. I have come to give you another chance to return her. I advise you to make use of it. I want Laura Taylor back. Now.”

  “What will you do next?” the Premier spat. “Will you attack innocent civilians next?”

  “There is no such thing as an innocent civilian,” Leida replied. “Your country is governed by elected representatives, not a dictator. Your people are responsible for the actions of your government, and your government attacked us without provocation. When we make war, we make war totally. As for what we will do next, I promise you it will be most unpleasant. You need to return Laura Taylor. For your sake, I hope she is completely unharmed. Harming her in any way would be a very stupid act. If she has been harmed in any way, even a bruise, your country will pay. If you have followed the marketing of our merchandise, you know that we don’t hold sales or give special discounts. If she’s been harmed, your country will pay full price.”

  The Premier still believed he was in a negotiation. He decided to be irate. “So, it’s to be more threats, is it? Well, I have one for you. If you attack us again, Laura Taylor will die.” He was completely unprepared for the response.

  Leida’s pellet gun appeared in her hand, and in less than a second, she had triggered over 20 shots. The charge on the pellets was not set high, but each exploded when it hit. The Premier’s office was blown to pieces in an instant, and he was thrown to the floor when his desk exploded. Leida appeared over him. “Listen very carefully, and keep in mind that I would be just as happy dealing with your successor. If Laura dies in your custody, for any reason whatsoever, even if it can be proved to be of natural causes, the French nation will cease to exist. It will take us perhaps 15 minutes, and when we are done, there won’t be a virus alive within your borders. We have done it before. If you think I’m blustering or bluffing, check with your Empire man. You have one hour to return Laura, and then we are going to get serious.” It was several minutes after she left before he managed to stand.

  He did call the Empire. When he told them what she had said, they assured him that it had indeed happened before. They also told him that the To’Ach’an were definitely not bluffing. They warned him to just return the woman before it was too late. His next call was to the To’Ach’an. Shanna picked up the line.

  The Premier had decided to negotiate one more time. “I have considered the situation, and I want to avoid hard feelings. We will return the woman, as long as you agree to compensate the families of the people you have killed and repay us for what you have destroyed.”

  Shanna didn’t even bother to check with Robert, and her reply was brief. “No.”

  It took the Premier a few seconds to realize there was no longer anyone on the other end of the call.

  Laura was being held in a private home by six men. Three were with her at all times, and the other three watched the perimeter. Laura spoke to one of her captors.

  “You’re dead, you know. When the To’Ach’an come for me they will kill everyone in this house. Then they will hunt down all of the others involved in my kidnapping and kill them, too. If you let me go now, I’ll put in a good word for you. Perhaps I can convince them to spare you.”

  The man walked over to her, stared at her for a moment, and then slapped her hard across the face. “Shut up, bitch. If your friends come to try and rescue you, I’ll kill you myself.”

  Laura smiled at him and licked the blood from her lip. “Oh, they will come. They will come with fire and thunder. Hell will come with them.”

  Podara and a couple of other To’Ach’an had been mentally searching for Laura. Langoth was the first to make contact, and she quickly joined with Podara. The first thing they told Laura was to not let anybody know she had been contacted. It took them a few minutes to pinpoint her physical location. She was being held in a small house in central Paris. A quick scan by Shanna showed three men in the room with her and three more in other rooms of the house.

  There was no way to know for certain whether there were other guards in the surrounding houses, so it was decided that full suppression was necessary. Leida’s team handled the attack. Shanna hit with a doughnut shaped beam of energy that just missed the house, and then expanded it. The beam destroyed everything in its path, and she spread it until it was about 200 feet from the house. Leida’s team hit almost at the same moment, blasting in through the walls. They knew where the guards were, and all six were dead in less than half a second.

  Just that fast, Laura Taylor was out of danger, and a 450 foot diameter area in central Paris had been totally destroyed. Back on Shanna, it was determined that Laura had been beaten and also drugged with Scopomine. She said the guards had been asking her about To’Ach’an weapons and numbers. She said the second time she was beaten for no reason. They hadn’t even asked her any questions. This had happened shortly after the To’Ach’an attack on the planes and ships, and appeared to be in retaliation. The guards had been French Secret Service.

  A few hours later, Leida flowed silently into the man’s bedroom. The five guards – three outside and two inside the house – were already dead. After checking the area for weapons, she turned on the light, took the glass of water from the bedside table, and dashed it into the man’s face. He woke up sputtering.

  “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

  Leida was about four feet from the man, pointing her pellet gun. The man’s wife began crying next to him in the bed. Leida said, “You are head of the French Secret Service, and you have to answer for Laura Taylor. She shouldn’t have been arrested, and she certainly shouldn’t have been mistreated. Your people beat her and drugged her. He started to protest, but Leida fired a single pellet. The charge was set low, but she fired it right into his groin, and the resulting explosion destroyed everything in that area.

  As he lay bleeding on the bed, Leida said, “next time we will leave you alone and kill your family instead. We are the To’Ach’an. We will not abandon even one of our people.”

  The following day, Leida again appeared in the Premier’s of
fice. It was a temporary office, since his regular office had been mostly blown up. “Well, we meet again, Mr. Premier.”

  “What are you doing here? You have the woman back.”

  Leida shook her head. “I told you that if the woman was harmed in any way, even a bruise, your country would pay. When we got her back, we found that she had been beaten several times and drugged. These were stupid acts, committed and ordered by stupid people. I told you that if you were stupid and allowed any harm to come to her, your country would pay. The word of the To’Ach’an is good. We keep our promises. It has been decided that no autos, ships, boats, rafts, barges, trains, busses, planes, or trucks will be allowed to enter or leave your country for one year. Any that try will be destroyed, and there will be no further warning given.”

  “Aircars carrying only people will be allowed to move freely, but aircars will be instructed to carry no cargo into or out of France. You must shut down all pipelines, phone lines, and power lines that cross your borders. Nothing but people may cross your borders. If you do not shut these down, they will be destroyed, along with a sizable area around where they cross your border. The phones your people have bought from us will work normally, except that no calls will be connected that cross the borders of your country in either direction.”

  “Do not doubt that we will do as we say. We give you 12 hours in which to halt all of this traffic, and then more of your people will begin to die. You are cut off for one year, and it begins 12 hours from now. Do you have any questions?”

  The Premier was silent for a few seconds. The shock was evident. “I presume allowance will be made for humanitarian supplies such as food and medicine?”

  “There will be no exceptions,” was Leida’s reply. “I suggest people needing medicine be transported across your borders into other countries. If you are short of food, it might be a good idea to send a lot of people out of the area for a while. I’m sure you have a lot of things to do, so I won’t take up any more of your time. Remember, violators of our order will be destroyed with no further notice.”

  The Premier stood up. “Don’t you have any respect for human life?”

  Leida turned back to face him. “My job is to respect and protect the lives and freedoms of the To’Ach’an and those under the protection of the To’Ach’an. I will do that without hesitation. You and your people threatened the life and freedom of one of our Tovena. You are paying a very high price for that incredibly stupid action, but if she had died, the price would have been the total annihilation of your nation.”

  “Your nation could still die. Perhaps one of your citizens will decide that the appropriate response to our actions is to kill one of our people somewhere else. If this were to happen, everyone in your country would die. We would not take the chance of it happening a second time. We would simply kill all of you and eliminate the threat.”

  “I am not a human and I am not from Earth. Let me make it so very simple that even you can understand. I am a warrior of the To’Ach’an. I do not share your value system. I eliminate those who threaten me. If you don’t want to be eliminated, then don’t threaten me, don’t threaten any To’Ach’an, and don’t threaten anyone or anything we have promised to protect. The word of the To’Ach’an is good. We keep our promises.”

  “It is our policy to set the price of attacking us so high that few will be willing to pay it. You took Laura Taylor because you wanted to make an example of her. Our response has been for the same purpose. We hope you have learned not to attack us. We hope others will learn from observing what has happened to you.”

  * * * * * *

  There were other incidents, although none so major. Reporters discovered that they did not have the right to hound and harass the To’Ach’an as they had been used to doing with others. Several reporters were badly injured, and two were killed before the message got through. One tabloid printed an article that was totally made up. The next morning, their building was destroyed.

  Businessmen had to learn a new way of doing business. They would make an offer, and the To’Ach’an would accept or refuse it. If refused, they would come back with another offer only to find that they had insulted the To’Ach’an by attempting to negotiate. People had heard on the news that the To’Ach’an did not negotiate, but they didn’t really believe it at first. Someone would offer the To’Ach’an some plants at a given price. The To’Ach’an would either accept or decline. They would not make a counteroffer. If they declined, that was it. There was no point in the seller coming back with a new offer.

  After a few months, the incidents declined until they just didn’t happen anymore. People had learned to adjust. They had discovered that in some ways, the To’Ach’an are a very primitive people, while in other ways, they are very advanced.

  Many on Earth had assumed that as societies matured, wars would disappear, violence would decrease, and people would live in harmony. The Empire and the To’Ach’an were proof of the falsity of that expectation. Both of these older societies were much more violent than Earth, and perhaps put less value on human life in general.

  Jonu explained it to Jane during one of their discussions of ethics. He put it pretty bluntly. “Evolution is the cause. The toughest, meanest, and smartest humans were the ones most likely to survive and pass on their superior genes. In addition, since women want their offspring to be survivors, these mean, tough, and smart humans got more opportunities to breed.”

  “After a few generations, these genes had spread, and the average human was tougher. In effect, the bar was higher. Now it took an even tougher human to stand out above the rest. Over thousands of years, the species just got tougher and smarter. Those who would not fight for food, mates, shelter, or whatever, were eliminated. Pacifism is not a survival trait.”

  It made perfect sense to Jane. She certainly wouldn’t breed with some wimp. What kind of half-witted weaklings could she expect from a union like that?

  School for a Healer

  After ten months in Shanna, Maria was a changed person, and was deemed ready to get some formal training as a healer. She had reverted to her previous optimism, she had developed an inner strength that had never been apparent in the past, and she had approached her combat classes like it was a new religion. While she still had a bad dream now and then, the dreams were different. In these dreams, she beat the pimps bloody.

  Crylth thought she would benefit from an outside school. An excellent private school was Gottyll on the planet Hordrun. Miko dropped her off while making a run that went nearby. He and his little ship, Morkalla, often did things that needed to be low key. Nobody even knew it was a jump ship. While the chief administrator of the school knew her patron was Robert Allen, nobody else at the school did, and she was under strict orders not to say.

  The course was eight months long. It was a multi-discipline school, not just for healers, and so there were students there studying many fields. Among the classes offered was an unarmed combat course, and Maria thought it would be a good idea to keep in shape and practice what she had learned from Kysandra.

  The instructor of this class was a man named Joth. The first day, he asked if any of the students had any training. Maria raised her hand. “I have,” she said.

  Joth had her come up to the front. “How much training have you had?” He asked.

  “I took private lessons for ten months, sir.”

  “Ten months!!! How impressive.” The class laughed, and Maria turned red. “Well, let’s see if you learned anything.”

  Without any other warning, Joth launched a kick aimed at her head. Maria easily evaded it. He faked another kick to the head, and slammed a left toward her stomach. Her stomach wasn’t there anymore, but her own hands slapped into his temples, and the lights went out. He came to a moment later, lying on the grass. To Maria’s surprise, he didn’t seem angry.

  She helped him up, and he motioned for her to come along. He walked far enough to be out of earshot of the rest of the class. “Those were nice moves,
young lady. How many lessons?”

  “Ten months, sir.”

  “You are awfully good for ten months. Who was your instructor, if I may ask?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but my patron told me I was not allowed to reveal his name, and if I told you who taught me, you might also know who my patron is.”

  “I see. If your instructor is as famous as all that, it tells me a great deal, Tovena. I would like for you to be my assistant. You are clearly my superior in this area. I’m sure I can get you a stipend, and I’ll clear it with the administrator. Also, if you don’t mind, I’d like to work out with you whenever you have time.”

  Maria put on her innocent look. She’d had a lot of professional practice. “My name is Maria, not Tovena. I do need a workout partner, and I’ll be glad to help with the class if you think I’m qualified.” For the rest of her time at school, Maria helped with the instruction.

  The rest of Maria’s classes also went well. It had been her lifelong dream to be a doctor, and healer was even better. She approached her classes with a ferocious dedication. In a class on diagnostic scanners, she met a man a couple of years older than herself. His name was Ronal. She liked his snapping black eyes and ready smile. “His butt’s not bad, either,” she thought.

  Ronal had noticed her checking him out, and after class, he asked her if she had plans for lunch. She accepted, and he took her to a little café about a 20-minute walk from school. The café was in a semi-basement. When you came in the door off the street, you walked down an open flight of stairs into the middle of the café. It turned out that Ronal’s parents owned the place.

  He was a big man, 6’3” or so, about 230 pounds, and he kept in shape. His favorite sport was kovet, which has similarities to both rugby and basketball. He was a member of a local league, and Maria enjoyed watching him play.

  Ronal and Maria also studied together a lot, and after a while, it seemed like they practically lived at a certain table in the back. One day Ronal asked her what she planned when school was over. She said, “I am going to go back to my patron’s to study under his healers for a year or two, and then I will open my own clinic on my home world.”