by Tony Peak
Sar glowered. “You’re lying about my ship’s beacon, just trying to get me to tell—”
“I think it is time you met someone.” Dunaar nodded at one of the soldiers, and the man left the chamber.
“The Sarrhdtuu are just using you,” Sar said. “Just like they used you for that mission to Xeh’s Crown.”
“I think this will reveal who is using whom,” Dunaar said as the soldier returned. Two Proselytes in copper-meld cuirasses and black masks flanked an Ascali female. She wore a translucent gown and full-face veil. Her dark mane, brown fur, and russet eyes made Sar frown.
“Zhara, your veil, please?” Dunaar rose from the throne.
The Ascali removed the veil, revealing a beautiful face with sharp cheekbones and full lips. The same face Sar had tried to replace Kivita with.
“Cheseia?” His skin numbed. A sharp pain stabbed his heart. “Cheseia!”
A Proselyte jabbed a nerve above Sar’s collarbone with a finger. Sar cried out and fell to his knees.
“Not quite. My lovely double agent is aboard Luccan’s Wish even now. Amazing what one will do, when one’s twin sister is involved. When my spies discovered two female Ascali had departed Sygma with a merchant suspected of being a Thede sympathizer, I acted. Cheseia has taken long enough, but as you can see, patience brings fruition.” Dunaar smiled.
“I am truly, deeply sorry,” Zhara whispered, her delicate voice an octave higher than Cheseia’s. Sorrow radiated from her gaze.
Dunaar whacked the back of Zhara’s legs with his staff. She grunted and her lithe body struck the floor.
“You see, Sar? This one is strong like her sister. I hope you enjoyed Cheseia. Rutting in space like two beasts.” Dunaar leered, sweat dribbling down his chin.
All his moments with Cheseia fell into doubt. Their relationship, her jealousy of Kivita, her incessant requests to meet with Navon and the Thede leadership. Always reminding Sar he possessed coordinates to their location.
Remembering how he’d handed Kivita over to her in those last moments over Tejuit.
Primal hate broiled in his heart. Sar punched the Proselyte in the face, but the man struck Sar three times in the chest. He teetered forward and grabbed the Proselyte’s leg. As the man swung down, Sar rolled and kicked the Proselyte over, then rose and balled his fists.
Coils encircled his throat again.
Shekelor shoved him up against the wall. “Naxans and Aldaakians shall not save you from me this time.” His breath stank of the mildew Sar had once smelled aboard a Sarrhdtuu ship.
“You’re mad,” Sar breathed. “This is the future you wanted for Byelor? You’ll be next.”
“Play the patriotic fool to the end if you wish. I know how to survive.” He rammed an elbow into Sar’s back. “That is for one of my ships shot down over Tejuit.”
“You’re their slave! Their tool!” Sar pulled at the coils with all his strength. Sleek like wet leather yet hard as steel, they didn’t budge.
“This is for losing Umiracan.” Shekelor backhanded Sar. Blood flew from Sar’s busted lips.
Dunaar walked over, staff in both hands. “That is sufficient, Shekelor Thal.”
“Zhhl told me I would be allowed to have him. Redryll owes me restitution, shall we say?” Shekelor’s coils wrapped around Sar’s arms.
Dunaar regarded the pirate warlord as one would a slug. “Leave us. When I am finished with him, you shall have what remains.”
“And her?” Shekelor nodded at Zhara. “We had an agreement.”
“Yes, as well as the Ascali,” Dunaar said. “Her usefulness is at an end.”
The coils dumped Sar onto the floor. “I shall hold you to that agreement . . . Rector.” Shekelor kicked Sar’s thigh and left the chamber.
“Such polite, fancy talk between you two. Doesn’t change the fact you’re both assholes.” Sar smirked.
Eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, Dunaar approached Sar. “Bring them.”
The two Proselytes hauled Sar to his feet and escorted him behind the Rector. Two others followed with Zhara. The group entered a wide corridor spaced with open doorways and hatches. Colored glass mosaics decorated the walls, and every ten feet a soldier stood at attention. Sar walked on his own, though the Proselytes held his arms above the elbow. A plush red carpet silenced his boot steps. He smelled the scent of clean-scrubbed air mixed with lotus oil fragrance. Gold-chased sconces and painted Susuron shells hung near every door.
“Grown fat in more ways than one, Dunaar,” Sar said. “Too bad the Sarrhdtuu will take it all from you.”
Dunaar snapped his fingers, and a Proselyte shoved a pacifier gag into Sar’s mouth. The rubber nipple filled his mouth and touched the rim of his throat. Sar steeled himself against the urge to retch.
They led him past a hall where cryopods contained hundreds of Inheritor soldiers. Another chamber housed a dozen gorgeous serving girls in cryostasis. Sar had heard of Arcuri’s Glory, the flagship of the Rector, but never realized so much was wasted for one man. Each gold-trimmed piece of decor reminded him of the Freen workers who’d died producing it.
The group entered a narrow corridor branching off from the main hall. Soldiers in full polysuits guarded a barred and locked doorway. Dunaar drew the bar aside and keyed in the lock sequence. The door opened from the inside.
Three chairs fitted with flexi restraints and rusted iron clamps waited in a room lit by a single lamp. Six small cells held four men and two women. All wore evergreen bodygloves and had malnourished visages.
“Kivita sends,” one woman with large green eyes said. She gazed at Sar as if she knew him.
The Proselytes strapped Sar into the middle chair and removed the gag, while Dunaar sat on a stool opposite Sar. Zhara waited near the door, the two soldiers holding her. One of the imprisoned men whimpered.
“You think I am a cruel man, Sar. I did not harm Zhara to make Cheseia obey my commands. On the contrary, she willingly revealed your Thede allegiance upon hearing Zhara had joined my serving staff.” Dunaar examined his fingernails.
“Get this over with. You know everything you want to know.” Sar braced himself. Proselytes were known torture specialists, zealous and nonempathic.
“Yet you want to take away from everyone else. Do you feel no shame?” Perspiration coursed down Dunaar’s nose. “What gives you the right to make decisions for millions of others? Who asked you to rescue them from the light and offer them darkness?”
“Kivita sends . . . Rector, Rector? Hmm.” The green-eyed woman rocked back and forth in her cell, moaning. One Proselyte kicked the bars of her cell, and she quieted.
“You are the darkness,” Sar said.
Dunaar glared. “Time is running out, do you not see? We shall all starve and freeze on cold worlds unless we heed the Vim’s holy call. Everything I do is for everyone’s salvation. Even yours. And how do you reward this generosity?”
A Proselyte pinched Zhara’s neck. She shrieked and her body spasmed, but the soldiers forced her to remain standing.
“By trying to destroy everything I, and generations of Rectors, have striven to build.”
The Proselyte jerked Zhara’s head back by the hair and pressed a thumb into her temples. The Ascali grunted, gasped, then squalled in agony.
Sar wanted to kill them all. Cut up every last one of the bastards. Fists clenched, legs tensed, Sar remained silent. Everything would be in vain if he crumbled. All his life, all his struggles, had brought him to this moment. He would not fail Kivita.
“See? You do not care for others. One word from you, one piece of information, and this lovely creature would be free of pain.” Dunaar rose from the chair and swung the staff with both hands into Zhara’s gut. She wheezed and went limp in the guard’s arms, but her eyes dared Sar to speak.
Dunaar pointed at Sar, and the other Proselyte jabbed a thumb behind Sar
’s right ear. Clenching his jaw, Sar squirmed in the chair. Nerve endings burned along his back.
“You resist because you think that I will kill you afterward. Or Shekelor, since he will take possession of you once I am satisfied.” Dunaar stroked Zhara’s cheek and sniffed her mane. “There is nothing noble about being a fool, Sar. Think about the innocents who have perished in Thede terrorist acts. The brave troops who gave their lives defending the faithful from your ilk.”
A Proselyte pinched a nerve on Sar’s left wrist. Fiery pain raced up his arm and blazed in his chest.
“I see mutation in your eyes, Sar,” Dunaar said. “Had the Inheritors policed your homeworld earlier, you would have been born whole. You could have been something greater than a mere rebel. Caitrynn could have lived a long time—”
“You made me what I am!” Sar shouted. “By invading Freen, you son of a bitch! Killing my sister, killing—”
Grabbing Sar by the hair, Dunaar faced him nose to nose. “How many more would die if I allowed every world to decide its fate? How many children would starve, how many would fall in senseless wars? Millions! How long will you remain blind? The Vim are our only hope. Eventually we will destroy ourselves in this small, galactic spiral arm. We human beings were meant for something greater. We were meant to rise above this prison!”
“You built this prison, but people will rise and cut you down,” Sar said through gritted teeth.
“Not after I have annihilated your friends. Consider all the minds you have poisoned, all the lives lost due to your sinful practices! What have the Thedes accomplished but the spread of suffering and hate? Look at my flabby face, my sweaty brow. A Thede bomb irradiated my glands as a boy. All my life I have hated your kind. You are scum, less than human. If not for the Vim and their prophets, you would still be living in mud huts or hiding in caves!”
Sar spat in Dunaar’s face.
Both Proselytes throttled Sar. Fists pummeled his face, struck his chest. Blood and drool flew from his mashed lips. Dunaar shouted into his ears; the Rector’s spittle and sweat splattered Sar’s neck. All the while, Sar focused on the woman he loved, the one who’d wanted him to finish something, to stop running.
“Shekelor told me all about Caitrynn.” Dunaar smacked Sar in the head with the stone staff. “He told me quite a bit about Kivita.” He rapped the staff against Sar’s knees. “Do you see a pattern here, Sar? Your hatred, your sin, has destroyed all that you love. By the Vim, I shall not allow you to destroy any more lives. All those thousands that perished on Sutara, and for what? Do you hear?”
Trembling in agony, Sar shook his head in the negative.
Dunaar laid the staff across Sar’s neck and rammed his head into the back of the chair eight times. “Do you hear? Do you?” he screamed in Sar’s face. Sweat coursed from Dunaar’s hands and down Sar’s numb, swollen face.
Old, raw emotions cracked open Sar’s heart. Dunaar was right, just like Shekelor. Sar had planned to use Kivita, had endangered her. Even now Cheseia might be delivering Kivita into Inheritor or Sarrhdtuu hands.
She might be dead, or undergoing far worse horrors than his own, all because he couldn’t control his selfish hatred. Sar squeezed his eyes shut. Tears still stung his bloodied eyelids.
“There, my son,” Dunaar whispered, caressing Sar’s curly head. “You are brave enough to face the truth of your foul endeavors.” He stood before Sar and sighed. “He is ready. Open Bredine’s cell.”
One Proselyte opened the green-eyed woman’s cell and nudged her forward.
Dunaar sat back on the stool, sweat pooling under his jowls. “Decode his brain. Find out what he knows about Kivita Vondir.”
Bredine paused, then grabbed Sar’s head in both hands. Sar waited for something to hit him, cause pain, or at least make his skin crawl. Nothing but a low throb traveled through his cranium. Bredine moaned and took deep breaths.
Numb with pain, Sar tried to resist, but Bredine cupped his head with surprising tenderness. Layers of memory peeled away as a distant whooshing entered his ears. The room faded as he lost himself in more pleasant recollections.
In reverse, Sar remembered his last moments with Kivita before leaving Tejuit. She’d almost told him she loved him; he was sure of it. Their hungry kisses after the argument on Terredyn Narbas, rescuing her on Vstrunn, watching her chest rise and fall as she breathed through the mask. Exploring the ice cap on Gontalo together, then throwing snowballs at each other. Making love to Kivita in his hammock aboard Frevyx with the gravity turned off, her hands gripping his buttocks, her mouth melded with his. The first emotional stirrings toward her as they escaped the derelict near Xeh’s Crown.
The room faded back into view, along with his aching body. Dunaar watched him like a starving madman.
Bredine shook as she drew back. “So gushing hot. Hmm.” She bumped against his right wrist.
A Proselyte shoved a finger in Sar’s ear and pinched a nerve on his neck. Sar screamed, his limbs jerking in the restraints.
“Leave him be,” Dunaar said in a casual voice. “Though you aren’t a Vim datacore, Sar, Savants can still access your memories. My predecessors learned long ago how to train these mongrels to wrest information from others.”
“What good will it do you?” Sar managed through stinging lips. He wasn’t sure if the Proselyte’s nerve attack or Bredine invading his mind made him shudder.
“He’s in love. Love, love, love. Gushing hot in void cold, yes. Gushing hot with Kivita. Love with a Savant, Rector. Food? Food, food, food.” Bredine pointed at herself and the five inmates.
Dunaar looked bored. “Don’t look so shocked; Cheseia told me of your affair with Kivita. You took the mission to Vstrunn rather quickly, as I had hoped. Yet it was not meant to be. Kivita will enter my Savant breeding program as a host for my children. Imagine how much she will enjoy that.” He chuckled.
Sar scowled at Dunaar. “Why the Sarrhdtuu?”
“Zhhl wants her, and once she births a few of my children, she will have served her purpose. Be content that Kivita fulfilled a role in guiding us to the sainted Vim. You should feel blessed being on the periphery of such a historical figure.”
Emotion rose in Sar’s chest again. Kivita might have fulfilled so much more. Seeing all those memories . . . all those precious, irreplaceable moments. He still loved Kivita, still had to hope she might make it. A reserve of strength he’d never realized existed blossomed into his limbs.
“Golden capsule? Hmm. Kivita slept in void cold. From baby to woman in golden capsule.” Bredine backed away as a Proselyte motioned her back to her cell.
“Never worry, my son, for—”
Sar wrenched his head away from Dunaar’s hand. “Go to hell.”
Dunaar snapped his finger at the Proselytes. “Place him in cryostasis after he cannot scream anymore. Then you may tell that pirate he may claim him.” He smoothed his robe and left the room. Zhara shot Sar a remorseful glance before the two soldiers elbowed her after Dunaar.
Gritting his teeth again, Sar prepared himself. As he flexed his fingers, the restraint over his right wrist loosened where a sharp bolt brushed his knuckles. He glanced at Bredine. She watched him with anxiousness, standing before her open cell.
The first Proselyte aimed a finger at Sar’s ear again. As the gloved digit neared him, Sar wrenched his right hand free and shoved the bolt into the Proselyte’s neck. Hot blood sprayed Sar’s hand. The man jerked back and fell.
The other Proselyte backhanded Sar and pinched his left shoulder. Every nerve on his left side ignited in white-hot pain. Sar screamed and tried to punch, but his strike went awry.
As the wounded Proselyte writhed on the floor, the other Savants whimpered in their cells. Sar gasped and reached for the ankle clamps, but the second Proselyte kicked Sar’s hand away and reached for the door alarm.
Bredine slammed her foot into the Pros
elyte’s side, then punched his jaw. Sar tried to work the other clamps loose while the Proselyte rapped Bredine’s left temple. She wobbled and slumped against the wall as Sar ripped away his ankle clamps. The Proselyte rounded on him.
Sar worked his left arm free just as the Proselyte punched. Ducking, Sar jabbed the man’s stomach. Bredine strangled the Proselyte from behind as Sar rammed the flat of his palm into the man’s nose. A crunch, a grunt, and the Proselyte struck the floor.
Without flinching, Bredine bent over and snapped both Proselytes’ necks. One of the male Savants wept, and another urinated in his cell.
“Hmm. Too far gone. Gone, gone. Leave them here?” Bredine pointed at her fellow inmates.
His entire body aching, Sar caught his breath. “Guess so.” A shiver rippled along his shoulder as the nerves finally settled.
Bredine looped his left arm around her slim shoulders. “Food, food, food,” she muttered, gazing up at Sar with hope.
“Just help me get this guy’s uniform on before they come back,” Sar said.
25
Seul took shallow breaths as Vuul stared her down on Aldaar’s bridge. Fresh out of her polyarmor, she felt nude in the presence of the operations staff and two squads of armed Troopers. Qaan and the other Archivers brooded nearby, sharing worried glances. Why were they all wasting time? They needed to act.
Kivita needed her.
“Why did you not fire upon Terredyn Narbas before it made a light jump from the Tejuit system?” Vuul’s tone stole the air from the bridge. “A crippled, unarmed vessel. Why, Captain Jaah?”
“Inheritor ships had already entered the system.” Seul’s cryoports tightened. “I thought it best—”
“You were under orders, Captain Jaah. When under orders, you do not think. You act.”
“Someone captured her before my squad arrived, Commander Vuul. The main Inheritor battleship has just exited this system, while their other ships remain. That can’t be a coincidence. Kivita is important to them. She must be aboard that battleship.” Seul wished Kael could be at her side, but she didn’t want him to face Vuul’s wrath, too.