Enryn

by Gerard Whittaker

  Those who had turned off their personal shields were the lucky ones, the first blast killed them in a split second of spurting blood.

  But those who were still protected were hit by thousand of pieces of wooden shrapnel that tore them to bits.

  A second barrage of shells and missiles descended on the killing ground, and then a third. Then the ESSs fell silent.

  A few dozen Warriors, driven mad by horror fled the battle racing back to the installation only to find that the traps they had so arduously avoided coming were even harder to avoid on the way back.

  The defences had not been built to keep them out of the jungle, but to stop them escaping alive.

  The Marines finally went on the offensive, hunting the survivors down and killing them with wooden darts or swords.

  Not one Warrior made it back to the installation alive.

  Then the Combat-cars and the ESSs swooped down on the installation, firing their forward energy pods, blasting their way inside through shattered walls and crumbling corridors.

  The attack lasted five seconds and then the ESSs crashed deep into the buildings, and the Marines were soon pouring through the alien installation with impunity.

  Deep in the centre, five floors below ground level, the Marines sealed off the final chamber where thirty Lords of All were cowering in fear. From being the Gods they thought themselves they were now hunted like rabbits.

  With the Marines guarding the installation the Percival family strode in to confront the Lords of All.

  A low dome covered the ceiling, glowing with unnerving colours, while banks of monitors lined the walls and thirty energy globes seemed to bounce around the room.

  The Lords of All swung away from the Percival family, as Ace, Enryn, Favian and Bellona hung back in the door.

  "You would dare disturb us Humans," a wave of mental power swept against their minds like a tsunami on a defenceless beach. "You know not to run for your very lives?"

  The mental power crushed their minds like empty beer cans, reaching for their souls to torture for an eternity.

  The Marines fell to their knees in absolute terror, knowing they were more than lost, they were damned for all eternity for their crimes against their Gods!

  Then Isralla looked up with a twinkle in her eye, and began to sing, quietly at first but her voice soon drove before her like an express train.

  "Know what that is?" John chuckled. "That is the death march of the Warrior Bards of the LySeelel, in simple terms it means that we will never give up, we will never surrender, and never stop fighting till the last of you are dead!"

  Gyor and Ison soon joined in the song, raising the power twenty fold as it lashed back at the Lords.

  Then the rest of the Percivals joined in and the song seemed to cut through the Lords like a plasma torch through butter.

  They screamed in panic as all hope fled and they knew they were going to die.

  "How do you this?" they begged in terror.

  "I am known as Gyor Inra-Shrombasre, the Lady of Temple Pasture, High Priestess of Ellberath the Divine, the Lady of Yag-Urth, and you should not be here!"

  "Who," they gasped.

  "You don't know me?" Gyor swore as if insulted. "You've never heard of me!"

  "Why should we?" they begged.

  "Because it might have saved your lives," she snapped in rage. "I came here for two reasons, the first was to declare war on you! And the second to find out if you are an invasion force, or a bunch of criminals trying to take over my galaxy."

  "Might is right," they replied.

  "That did not answer my question," she snapped. "Are there more of you coming?"

  "They will come, if we leave anything for them."

  "Sounds like a bunch of thieves," Isralla sighed.

  "Powerful ones," Gyor replied. "They will come as they wish, and when they wish in the night. Always when we forget to lock the doors."

  "Then what is their galaxy like?" John asked.

  Gyor concentrated and then lashed out with a mental beam that slashed across the Lords, laying bare their minds. "I've seen enough John, let's finish this." She reached out to push her hand through a energy shield and grab the occupant, crushing his neck with negligence.

  The Lords of All could only watch with incomprehension as she did the impossible. Gyor turned to Enryn, "Thanks for that, I owe you, and it felt so good."

  Isralla drew her sword, a four hundred year old Kattana, and sliced through a Lord, shield and all.

  John drew his Glock, screwed a wooden extension onto the barrel, pushed it through the shield and fired once, blowing the Lord's head off.

  The Marines now joined the Percivals in a killing spree, leaving not one survivor.

  They turned from the bloodbath, leaving Eileen and Ison to salvage all the alien equipment they could, and walked back into the installation, searching every chamber, and finding little that they liked.

  A chamber that used to hold young men, but now only a couple of desiccated corpses had been left. The next room was a surgery where they had been adapted to become Warriors, and a living crystalline plant that seemed somehow significant, as though it had been used to control the victim's minds.

  With the Iowa now taking up station over the world Becky brought the Arrow down to land before the installation, and was brought in by Jina. And the girls got to see the reality behind the myth of invulnerability. When Jina saw the dead Lords her pregnancy started playing up, and Becky had to help her back into the fresh air, and realised that she didn't mind one bit. For one who had done everything to be free, she had now had found her true freedom as a slave.

  "Put it this way," Jina gasped, "you get to fly some great ships, and we pay for everything."

  "Sweet deal," Becky laughed.

  Jina started to throw up on the grass, and finally gasped, "One other thing, when you were free and had your own ship, where were you going?"

  "To the next man who wanted to beat me!"

  It took a week to strip the installation apart, and then the Iowa left the world behind, unleashing a single missile as she reached Hyperspace, and vanished from reality. And far behind the missile struck the installation and exploded with a ten mega ton nuclear explosion, destroying all evidence of what had happened.

  When the injured were back on the Texas Gyor treated them all herself, even the couple pulled from stasis body bags.

  It was a few weeks later that Enryn started to feel a bit sick, and it took her three weeks to admit she was expecting, but was so afraid of missing the final battle she kept silent.

  The final tally was that three hundred Marines had wiped out a force of three thousand warriors, with no fatalities.

  Sweet.

  John and Isralla invited the Marines to the Percival quarters, which usually meant they wanted someone killing.

  Ace, Enryn, Favian and Bellona soon reported and found an impromptu celebration going on, which involved a Hot Tub and a lot of booze. The Marines stripped off and joined the family in the Hot Tub, and were handed glasses full of spirits by Jina.

  "Okay," Enryn sighed as she gasped around the mellow whisky, "who do you want killing this time?"

  "This isn't a combat mission," Isralla sighed as her drink slid frozen down her throat to explode in her belly into an alcoholic mist that seemed to penetrate her entire body at the same time.

  "Sources have found a Ship between the stars," John laughed. "Enryn, I thought you might like to see what your kin is like. The ones who haven't crash landed or been turned into slaves."

  "This is just a recon mission in the Arrow," Isralla laughed. "So it will be just us six, but you might want to bring a friend or two."

  "No trees in space," Ace laughed, "so we don't need Fae, but I think Rosa needs a break."

  "We'll be bringing Jina and Becky," Isralla insisted. "Favian?"

  "Just the two of us."

  Jina and Becky joined them in the Tub, and soon Rosa was called to join them as they got slightly drunk a
nd used to the idea of spending months together in a small Frigate.

  Ace and Enryn left Fae looking after Apollina, Rastus, Arlena and Betha, with promises from their friends to visit regularly and keep the sport in line. They left for the Arrow with Rosa, giving their friend her first taste of real space flight.

  John and Isralla soon joined them with Jina and Becky as back up pilot.

  Favian and Bellona entered side my side to find Rina and Tina waiting for them in near mutiny. "You are not leaving us," Tina gasped in outrage.

  "Neither of you can cook," Rina insisted, "and you'll be eating survival rations the whole trip."

  "There's plenty of room," John laughed. "And we could use some help."

  "This is just a scouting trip," Isralla explained. "So sit back and enjoy it."

  Becky slid into the command chair and cracked her fingers in anticipation, "So where to Boss?"

  "Oh, out there," John laughed. "I'll let you have fun for a while."

  "Yes sir!" she snapped. "By the way mistress Isralla, if you still want to brand me, I'm listening." The Arrow floated through the Texas's lock and into space, and Becky floored the drive looping around the flotilla of capital ships and blasting off into the depths of space. "I love this ship," she screamed.

  "I was joking," Isralla gasped, "but now I think I'll have to brand you! I'm certainly not letting you go..."

  "The family's big enough to take her," John laughed. "But I'm not sure about the galaxy."

  "Becky, consider this a trial at fitting in," Isralla laughed, "if you serve us well you may beg to be our slave."

  "I'm begging, I'm begging," Becky laughed. "Please let me serve you!"

  John walked over to hold the girl's shoulders and bent to kiss her neck, nipping her slightly, tasting her blood for the first time.

  "So?" Isralla laughed.

  "Taste her yourself," John sighed.

  Isralla also nipped the girl's neck, "There's a lot of damage in there. I'm sorry Becky, we can't trust you yet."

  "You were a slave too long," John explained. "If not in reality, but in yourself. You've a lot of healing to go through, but I hope you will make it."

  "I'm not good enough," Becky gasped.

  "You will be," Isralla sighed, "if you really want to be."

  "It's all about you," John pointed out, "everything is about what we can give you, a fresh orgasm or a new ship. That's not the way it works, we wanted you to be a part of our family, but you have yet to earn the right."

  "I wish I knew what you are talking about," Becky sighed.

  "That is the problem, you don't," Isralla explained.

  The Arrow flashed past the speed of light, going hyper in seconds and the crew settled down to wait the voyage out.

  Favian and Bellona were given the treatment that would extend their lives immeasurably, and their girls were tested and found to be worthy to join them, and so Rina and Tina were both bitten by Ace.

  It was only a month later that Enryn revealed she was expecting, and that she didn't like it. She was far too busy being a Marine to become a full time mother.

  Rosa watched Enryn complaining about the one thing she wanted most of all, and the only thing no Biroid could ever be.

  "Look, I can't fight a war carrying a kid," Enryn sighed. "And I'm not letting Ace down."

  "Don't you want to be a mother?" Ace sighed.

  "Sure I do, when I'm ready. But not just yet."

  Isralla sighed sadly, "I could stop it, I could abort your son."

  "Never, but I can't give up everything just like that. I've been killing myself to become a Marine, and now I'm a good one."

  "Isralla, can't you do anything?" Ace gasped.

  "Not on the Arrow, and by the time we make it back to the Texas it'll be too late."

  "Could you give him to me," Rosa whispered.

  "What!" Enryn gasped.

  "Isralla, can't you do something like that?"

  "Rosa, you have no idea what you are asking."

  "I'm asking to save this child, isn't that what this is all about? Saving lives."

  "If I did it would change you all forever, both of you and the child. But I don't know how."

  "What are you saying?" Enryn gasped in shock.

  "That Rosa could carry the baby for you," Isralla sighed. "It has been done, in a proper environment."

  "And on the Arrow?" Ace asked.

  "It can be done, and I know how to do it. If you really want me to transfer the baby to Rosa, and if she really wants me to, I will comply."

  Ace sighed, "You mentioned risks, what are they?"

  "Enryn might never be able to have another baby. I'll be transferring a lot into Rosa, besides the baby, and it's going to hurt you both."

  "And I," Rosa gasped, "what of me?"

  "I don't know, you might be able to have children of your own after this, but I'm making no promises."

  Rosa gasped, "If you can, then do it."

  "Enryn?"

  "Do it Isralla."

  "And you Ace, as the father you have to agree as well."

  "Do it Isralla, but be gentle."