Tale of the Spinward March: The Great Khan (Tales of the Spinward March Book 1)

by David Winnie

  He had laid out the plan exactly as Alexis and Ameranda had shown him. It made such sense; how could they not see the plan’s value? That Alexis and Ameranda would profit significantly was of no importance. It was for the good of mankind

  Well, the Union Council’s opposition would soon be a moot point. He had decided to insist they move the plan forward. His father hadn’t voiced support for Suishin for the last time. It was time to remove the doddering old fool and his filthy alien sidekick. It was time to remove all the aliens from Earth and start his campaign through the stars.

  Oh, it would be glorious! Suishin’s eyes would tear up when he saw the Empire he was to create. Humans, spread across the sky, on every world. Oh, he’d be magnanimous, allowing enough of the aliens to live and serve their human masters.

  He smacked his lips. His mouth was dry, the first indication that the dauderign was wearing off. The headache would start soon, along with the pain in his stomach.

  He didn’t need the dauderign, of course. He could stop taking it any time he wanted. He’d be sick for a few days but the effects would clear up and he’d be fine.

  But, damn it, he loved how powerful it made him feel. Since the first time Ameranda had shown him how to use the inhaler as a teenager, he’d enjoyed the confidence, the strength, the superiority the drug enhanced in him.

  With it, he imagined, he could not only challenge his father, but defeat him. Perhaps he could even defeat Alexis Shurkorov.

  He resisted the urge to kick his chamber door open. He could feel the madness at the edges of his mind, behind the headache burning its way into his brain. Trembling hands opened the drawer on his nightstand. He found the mask and clamped it over his face and inhaled deeply. It clicked once.

  Empty! He threw it to the side. It had been half full this morning, he was sure of it. Trembling, he swept his hand along the shelf in his closet. The spare wasn’t there, and the headache was searing into the core of his head. He gripped his skull and groaned. He didn’t want to go through this again. Early on, just once, he defied Ameranda and she withheld the dauderign. He had wanted to die. He’d rather die than face this pain again.

  The bathroom! He kept one in the bathroom! Under the sink! He staggered across his apartment, tripping over the ornate rug in the middle of the room. He bounced once, getting to his hands and knees, crawling like a beast. Clawing at the door of the vanity tore it from its hinges and he dug through the towels and bottles, certain the flask was there. When the cabinet was empty, the pile of debris mocked him as he tore open boxes, shook out towels, the madness in his brain screaming. The dauderign wasn’t there!

  Suishin sat on his bathroom floor, sobbing. Gods, his stomach was starting to twist. He retched and vomited into the toilet. Shaking and sweating, he staggered back into the main chamber, wracking his brain to remember where he had hidden his emergency inhaler.

  “Is this what you are looking for, Brother?” Angkor stood in the window adjacent to his balcony, the coveted canister of dauderign in his hand.

  “Brother, please,” Suishin begged. “I’m sick. Give me my medicine.”

  Angkor shook his head. “Brother, I am a doctor,” he said. “I know what this is. It explains much. Please, Suishin, let me help you.”

  “You want to help me, give me my medicine,” demanded Suishin.

  “You’ll thank me one day, Brother,” Angkor replied. “Perhaps you’ll regain your sanity when your body throws off the effects of this poison. When you regain your senses, then I will use you in my government.”

  “Your government?” Suishin’s stomach rolled again and he growled. “What government would that be, Brother? Your test tubes and beakers? Pah!” He hacked and gagged, trying to spit at his brother. Alas, his mouth was as dry as the desert outside his window.

  “Nevertheless, you will not be replacing Father,” Angkor was calm. “We discovered your cabal, Suishin. Your masters are dead now. Your power is broken. I am the only reason you are alive today.”

  Dead? Ameranda? Alexis? How could his whelp of a brother do this? “I don’t believe you, you’re lying,” Suishin groaned.

  “No, he is not lying.”

  The brothers turned at the words from their father, who strode into the room followed by Ryder Finn.

  ‘Give that here,” Tenzing ordered. Angkor handed his father the dauderign canister. Tenzing held it with two fingers, the odious and filthy thing. He flicked it to Suishin.

  Suishin clamped the mask over his face and breathed deeply. Ah, the briny dust filled his lungs and cleared his head. He seemed to grow several inches as he straightened and flexed his massive chest. Fulfilled, he removed the mask and tossed it on his bed. “That’s better,” he groaned as he stretched, “I feel human, more than human. I feel like a god again. Thank you, Father.”

  “Do not thank me, vile creature,” snarled Tenzing. “Either of you. I am ashamed of both of you! Suishin for allowing yourself to be taken in by such vermin. And you,” his accusing finger pointed long at Angkor, “for presuming! Everything that was happening with your brother was what I had planned. Now you have killed potential allies and placed agents of mine in harm’s way! Further, you have forced my hand. Now, tonight, in this place, one of you must die.”

  “Fair enough, Father,” Suishin cracked his knuckles. “Are you ready to meet the gods, little Pitth?”

  “Why are we fi…” was all Angkor got out before Suishin leapt at him, his massive arms spread wide. Angkor ducked and his brother crashed into the doorjamb. Suishin roared to his feet and swung a fist at Angkor’s head. He connected, throwing his brother across the room. He followed Angkor closely, gathered him in his arms and raced to the wall across the room, releasing him a fraction of a second before Angkor hit it, crushed between his brother and the unyielding stone.

  Angkor slumped to the floor, trying to breathe. Suishin, a placid look on his face, raised his fists and pounded down on his brother, bam, bam, bam. He grabbed Angkor by the collar to lift him just as Angkor’s fist shot out and connected with Suishin’s groin. Gasping and groaning followed as the elder brother fell to a knee. Angkor, still grasping for breath, swung wildly, punching Suishin in the face three times.

  They both staggered to their feet. Suishin dropped his right arm, then launched a looping haymaker aimed for Angkor’s chin- and missed. Angkor jumped on his brother’s exposed back and latched his arm across Suishin’s throat. “Surrender, Brother,” he hissed in his brother’s ear.

  “Never!” came the strangled reply. Suishin repeated the method he used moments before, this time with Angkor on his back. It worked again and Angkor was crushed between Suishin and the wall and he lost his grip. Both combatants fell to the floor.

  A statue had fallen from Suishin’s nightstand. Angkor grabbed it and crawled to his brother who was stirring. He used the statue as a club, pounding over and over until the larger man lay unconscious.

  “Finish him.” The order came from Tenzing, a look of disgust on his face.

  Angkor leaned back against the wall. “No, I will not murder my own brother.”

  There was a sliding click noise. Tenzing was pointing his personal needle gun at Angkor. “Finish him,” he ordered, “or I will. Ryder will be my witness that you assaulted us both, intent on killing your brother so you would be the next leader. Remember, the punishment for murder of a Khalkha brother is long and painful.”

  Angkor stared at his father for a long minute, then crawled to Suishin. All the years of bitter anger and resentment boiled to the surface. The insults, Suishin’s shameful actions. He gripped Suishin’s throat and began to squeeze, constricting his brother’s airway. Leaning forward, he placed his full body weight on Suishin’s throat. Already semi-conscious, Suishin could only grunt and feebly attempt to push Angkor away.

  Time passed slowly, feeling like hours instead of the five minutes it took for Suishin to die. Angkor’s rage started to subside as his brother’s struggles became weaker and weaker, finally ceased. Su
ishin’s last breath rattled from his ruined throat and it was over.

  Tenzing grabbed Angkor by the collar and threw him to the side. He pried open Suishin’s eyes, examining them for the spark of life. He nodded. “Ryder, my friend,” he said, “not exactly how we planned it, but it’s done.” He stood and the two men embraced. “I shall miss you, my friend.”

  “As shall I,” replied the blue-skinned man.

  “You know what to do,” Tenzing said, rubbing his eyes. Ryder nodded, picked up Suishin and carried him out onto the balcony. He raised the body over his head and threw it over the rail. There was the messy sound of a body hitting the stone courtyard below.

  “You will go to your quarters and stay there,” Tenzing ordered Angkor. “When the inquisitors come to question you in the morning, you will say you entered your brother’s room in time to see the alien throw poor Suishin over the rail. I, in turn, will order the deportation of every alien on Earth, with the orders to shoot Ryder on sight when he’s spotted.”

  Angkor painfully stood. “Why, Father?” he asked. Tenzing backhanded his son, knocking him to the floor.

  “Because I am the leader and this must be done,” he snarled. “There can be only one leader, one Khan. And I need you, your reputation intact, to be that leader.” He spun on a heel and left the room, Ryder Finn at his side.

  There was outrage at the murder of Suishin, son of Tenzing. Cries for justice and vengeance spread across the planet. Aliens of every sort were attacked on sight by mobs, seeking to extract any measure of revenge for the murder of the tall, powerful heir to Tenzing.

  Lost in the news was the mysterious explosion on Alexis Shurkorovs yacht and the untimely death of Ameranda Whitestone in a motorcycle accident.

  Ryder Finn had disappeared. Two days after the murder, Tenzing reluctantly agreed with the Council and ordered all aliens to leave Earth. “It is clear that so long as one alien of our dear Earth is allowed to roam freely, then no citizen of our precious world is safe,” stated a grieving Tenzing. “As such, I state that no alien shall ever set foot on Earth again!”

  The planet roared its approval. Scenes were shown on every media of aliens of every sort being forced onto shuttles and lifted off the planet. There were riots in several cities where the perception was that the government wasn’t moving fast enough. Nearly one hundred beings, human or otherwise, died in one such riot.

  Interesting, thought Angkor. Am I the only one to notice Father issued a statement, not a declaration? And that the Council hasn’t taken the statement under consideration and made my father’s statement a law? Just what are you up to, Father?

  Security had installed a ballistic curtain over his balcony, so his view of the valley was obscured. A guard waited outside his door, politely but firmly keeping Angkor in his chambers.

  So he sat and meditated.

  He missed Sophia terribly. After the meeting on Xaid’s airship, Dawlish had taken her away and hidden her for her safety at Angkor’s insistence. He didn’t regret sending her away. He had rushed into this situation without considering her safety, only remembering her after Salaam’s team had started the killing. For that, he felt terrible guilt. Still, she was safe. He prayed he’d see her once more before…

  Father’s plan. Angkor had been so frightened at what his brother would do, he never considered his father might have a plan. When Dawlish and his friends had presented their plan he rushed forward without considering the consequence. Now Sophia was in hiding and his brother was dead by his hand, himself locked away in his father’s Keep.

  Still, Father had said he needed Angkor safe and with his reputation intact. Clearly, Tenzing had a plan within the plan.

  Five days after Suishin’s murder came his funeral. The Keep’s bonzes had ritually cleaned his body and cremated him. The white box with pictographs of prayers and glyphs sat on the altar. Angkor had donned his robes from Temple Angkor wat, watching the ritual from the side. The bonzes sang the long prayers and burned incense to help Suishin’s soul find its way in the next life.

  The tottering eldest bonze lift the remains from the altar, holding the box with shaking, bony hands. He shuffled to Tenzing, mumbling in a high-pitched voice. Tenzing accepted his son’s box with a bow. Spying Angkor from the corner of his eye, he whispered an order to an aide before leaving the temple.

  “Your father orders you to change into traveling clothing and meet him at the mountain portal,” the aide stated. “Your guard will show you the way.”

  The clothing was waiting in his chambers. Not the ceremonial breeches and jerkin he had worn in another time and place but rougher, hardier. The boots were stiffer, durable. At the mountain portal, his father waited with two ponies.

  They traveled silently into the mountains. The summer scrub was dry and brown. Only along the numerous streams was there color, pillows of moss clinging to the rock, beds of wildflowers nodding in the sun. Insects snapped and buzzed, flying to and fro amongst the tufted stalks of grass and summer flowers. There was food to eat, nests to build, eggs to care for. The passing of the two men wasn’t enough to disturb the cycle of life.

  Dusk came. They camped in the lee of a cliff. Tenzing produced a portable thermal and their camp had a cheery glow in the dark mountain night. After eating, father and son lay under the wide sky, each lost in his own thoughts. The thermal shut down after an hour, plunging their campsite into the darkness of the deep mountains.

  Above them, the sweep of the universe was in stark relief to the ground beneath them. Tenzing considered the cost of the plan he had set in motion. It was proceeding as it needed. But the cost…Dear Gods, the cost.

  Angkor searched the pinpoints of light, straining to locate Jupiter and Ganymede Station. What he would give to be back there, Sophia at his side amongst his scanners and notes. Tonight could be movie night, an ancient tradition a thousand years old. Groups of the residents would gather in each other’s homes, watching old movies and eating. There would be laughing and joking, friends enjoying each other’s company.

  Sophia. He missed her terribly. The days since the assassinations had begun were the longest they had been separated since the night before he had confronted the old tea merchant. He drifted off to sleep, weeping silently. He swore he would never send her away like this again.

  The next morning, they traveled deeper into the Khangai Mountains. Cresting a hillock, they saw a wide grass covered slope descending the mountain, dotted with summer flowers waving lazy in the slight breeze. Beyond, mountains stood sentinel to the far side of the vale.

  “Here,” Tenzing said.

  They dismounted and unstrapped the shovels from their saddles. Each stopped from time to time to admire the view. Suishin, spoiled in life, nevertheless had a spectacular vista for his eternal sleep. Tenzing, his eyes red and watery, placed his eldest in the hole. He pulled the dirt in the hole with his hands and patted the mound.

  He sat next to the grave and sighed. “I imagine in the first days, the Gods themselves sat here and admired their work,” Tenzing said. “Perhaps, should they find themselves back on this hilltop, they could pause and say something kind for your brother.

  “I’m glad it is you who are here with me today, Angkor,” his father said. “This is how the plan said it would be, although today I would give anything for it not to be so.

  “There will be war, Angkor. We thought our victory over the Solarians would finally convince the Galactic Council of our worthiness. We hoped we would at last be allowed to grow. But the Galactic Council fears us, hates us. Ryder and I have spent the last forty years trying to prepare Earth for the next war. But it is a lost cause, my son. When the Solarian war was over, we returned to our petty divisions and arguments. Our fleet never recovered from that last battle and is now old and obsolete.

  “I ordered the aliens off Earth so when the war comes, we aren’t killing innocent beings. Perhaps the colonies will be left alone and the humans there can survive.

  “But here, on Earth, we a
re doomed.”

  Chapter 13

  June 3044 A.D.

  “But here, on earth, we are doomed.”

  His father’s words weighed heavily on Angkor’s heart.

  Doomed.

  Following the burial of Suishin, they returned to the Keep. The return trip was busy with conversation as Tenzing and Angkor discussed the impending war. Tenzing had invested heavily in spies to see if they could find who and when the Council would attack. Ryder had directed the spy web; as an off-worlder, alien beings were more likely to respond to him than any average human.

  Now, of course, every species in the Sagittarius Arm knew he had murdered the son of Earth’s leader. Tenzing expected Earth’s greatest enemies on the Council would fall over themselves to curry his favor.

  Suishin had pushed to increase spending to the fleet. “Except if we spend every credit in the budget,” Tenzing stated, “we will still fall far too short to the necessary upgrades the fleet. No, we need a new fleet, a modern fleet. Unfortunately, a modern fleet will take decades to build even if we had the funds.

  And time,” Tenzing sighed heavily. “I’m certain we just don’t have the time.”

  “Then we need to find another way to fight the war, Father,” Angkor insisted. “What of an insurgent war?”

  “Again, our enemy is time,” explained his father. “If we have a patient enemy, insurgency might work. But at what cost? And suppose we face an enemy who has no patience? At the first hint of insurgency, I would pull my troops and bomb the planet into submission…or extinction.”

  Arriving at the Keep, Tenzing beckoned to Angkor. “I have something for you, my son,” he said. “Perhaps the most important thing I can give you.”