As soon as he invoked the Fae the world around him seemed to slow. He knew his reflexes were boosted slightly, though they were already at about their maximum due to his physical training. The real increase was in the brain, giving him more time to think about the situation he was in, and adjust his physical responses as necessary.
The slender dueling blade slid past. Patrick wondered why the man had such a blade so ill suited for battle so handy. Like this had all been planned.
Rory whipped the blade around and slashed. Patrick ducked under the blade, then jumped back as Rory reversed it. As soon as the blade passed Patrick jumped in with a right front snap kick, connecting with Rory’s belly and sending the man staggering back.
“I’ll have your heart,” yelled the warrior, bringing the sword overhead to slash down, not a good idea with a dueling blade. Patrick stepped forward and slapped his hands together overhead, trapping the blade, then delivered another front snap kick to Rory’s gut. The man grunted, doubled over, and relaxed his grip on his sword. Patrick jerked the blade away from the older man and flung it away. He dropped down and swept Rory’s left leg from beneath him. Rory fell, and Patrick vaulted on top of him, slamming both hands onto the bigger man’s ears. Rory shrieked. Patrick stood and looked down at the stricken man.
“Stay down,” he said, pointing a finger at the big man. “It’s over. You’ve lost.”
Patrick turned away and started to walk toward his brother, glad that the spectacle was done. He could sense Rory rising behind him. He didn’t need the shouted warning from his brother. With perfect timing he bent at the waist and sent a strong side kick into Rory as the big man staggered forward. Rory’s course was reversed in a moment and he fell back to the ground with a loud grunt.
Patrick stopped in front of the Duke while Sean handed him his sword. He gave a short bow to the Duke while he took the sheathed blade.
“As I promised, my Lord,” said Patrick with a smile. “No blood.”
“You sit back down, Rory,” said the Duke, looking away from Patrick for a moment. “It’s over.” He looked back at the monk with a wide smile. “I’m right glad to have you defending my back, sir Monk. Very glad indeed.”
Patrick bowed again and turned away, wanting to get away from the camp fire and the men. He hadn’t wanted to fight the man, and was sure he had made an enemy for life. He had not only defeated the man, he had embarrassed him as well. He was sure there would be a price to pay, eventually.
“Wait up, little brother,” called out Sean, running after him.
The smell of cooked meat came with his brother. Patrick could feel his mouth watering as he spied the joint of meat on the plate in his brother’s hand.
“You have to eat something,” said Sean, passing over the plate, which also had some fresh baked bread alongside the meat. “Tomorrow’s a battle. We will all need our strength.”
“Thank you,” said Patrick, feeling his stomach grumble. “I will be ready.”
“I know you will,” said Sean with a nod. “Watch yourself, and watch your back. Now I have to meet with the Duke and the general, so we can go over the plans tomorrow.”
Patrick watched his brother walk away, then turned back to the small rise where he had sat before. Patrick wolfed down the meal, more hungry than he had thought. He performed his evening meditations and prayer, his senses always alert for anything that might intrude upon his presence. Because of that he was surprised when he opened his eyes and found himself looking at something from legend, down the hill and almost obscured by the shadows, green eyes glinting in the distant firelight.
Is that a cat? he thought, meeting the eyes of the beast. It blinked once, the green fire extinguished for a moment. It blinked again, then turned and slid into the shadows so smoothly that Patrick almost thought it had disappeared. More portents and signs, he thought. There were no cats that he knew of on this world. It was the world of large reptiles, and few mammals other than humans. He had seen pictures of cats and other marvelous beasts in the texts that the monastery preserved. But if they were coming back to the world, did that mean the ancient would also return? Not soon enough, he thought. Maybe they can rescue us from the madness of war, the insanity of raids and plunder. That would be nice, but nothing he had ever thought possible.
Patrick thought about the matter for another couple of hours, sitting on the rise. The camp was noisy for a few hours, then settled to mostly quiet as the men bedded down. Sentries continued their rounds. Every once in a while shouting broke out as soldiers got caught up in a dispute over winning or losing at dice or cards.
Something caught his eye, and Patrick looked up into the night sky dominated by Brahma and her consorts. There were flashing lights up there, bright pinpoints. Sometimes a flash of colored light appeared for a moment, to disappear as if it never were. A battle in heaven, thought the young monk. Or maybe just some phenomenon we will someday understand. After a while the lights stopped, and Patrick got up to walk to his tent and get some sleep before the coming dawn. He thought he saw a shadow moving with him, something small. The cat? But he didn’t notice it as he entered the camp, and he put his mind for preparing for the morrow, and his first real battle.
Chapter Two
Alyssa Suarez gazed with her cat green eyes at the screen sitting above her chair. The door swished open and Derrick McAndrews walked in with a couple of trays in his hands. He set one down on the side table of Alyssa’s chair and took the seat next to hers.
“What’s our boy up to now?” he asked, buttering a roll, then taking a sip of his beverage.
“Still doing monkish things as far as I can tell,” answered Alyssa to her junior partner. She looked over at the food and felt her stomach turn. Not that it was bad. The auto-kitchen of the small ship turned out surprisingly good meals. It was just the tension of the day. Tomorrow they would hopefully make contact with their target, the one they had come four hundred AU to see.
“And how’s Shadow?” asked the other agent, concern in his voice.
Not as concerned as I am, thought Alyssa, glancing up at the forward view port of the control room. Scores of brightly colored fish were swimming near that port, attracted by the light from within. “Shadow’s doing fine. He’s a smart cat.”
“With a smart controller,” said Derrick, lifting the now thoroughly buttered roll in a dark hand to his mouth.
Alyssa threw him a frown, then closed her eyes, looking through her own brain with the entangled senses of the cat. She was throwing the image on the screen from her implant for her partner’s benefit.
“You are, you know,” continued Derrick’s voice. “Smart, I mean. And beautiful.”
“And very, very uninterested,” she said, opening her eyes and looking with a steady gaze on her partner. “And Shadow is the smart one of this entangled team. I just give him direction, and he does the rest.”
Alyssa turned her attention back to the screen, at the image of the shaven headed man. He was a bit thin, as befitted someone from a light gravity world. Vasus only had about point five three standard gravities. Alyssa was from a much larger and denser world, with one tenth of a gee over standard. She still wondered where that standard had come from. Somewhere from the dim past, she was sure. But the face of the young monk was pleasant to look at, freckled and intelligent. She was sure he would have had the deep red hair of his brother as well.
The ship shook for a moment, passing the vibrations of the tremor up from the sea bottom. This was a minor one. They had already experienced far too many in the three days they had been on the surface of the world. I know it’s still ten years away, she thought as the tremor subsided. But I don’t want to be here when this world hits the Roche limit of its primary. Then the tremor was over and she could concentrate on the target again.
“Did you see the way he moved?” she asked in a quiet voice. “When he was fighting that big barbarian.”
“Yeah,” said Derrick in a harsh voice. “Very impressive. But he wouldn�
�t last a second against a Marine. And they’re all barbarians, remember.”
“Just like we were, seven hundred years ago,” she replied, her attention focused on the young man walking back to the camp, as Shadow lived up to his name.
“But we crawled a little further than they did,” said Derrick with a frown. “We’re in space, and they’re still barbs.”
“They had a little harder time of it than we did, Derrick,” said Alyssa, standing up and looking down at the man. She could feel her face burning with anger. So many of her fellow citizens looked down on anyone who hadn’t risen from the ashes as fast as they had.
“We all got knocked down,” said Derrick, wiping his chin with a napkin and looking up at her. “Just saying they haven’t done as well.”
“They got hit with something really big,” said Alyssa, hands going to her hips. “It pushed them out of stable orbit, and they’re about to pay for it big time, a thousand years later. And what about those big damned beasts they’ve had to live with. I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up around them.”
Alyssa turned away with a huff and plopped back down in her seat, her eyes going to the screen where the monk could be seen getting into a small tent. “I think they’ve done very well. This is an exciting time for them.”
“Until they break up a decade from now, you mean,” said Derrick.
Alyssa felt her rage rise as she looked back at the man.
“Just saying,” he said, holding up his hands. “Just saying. There’s not much we can do about it unless we get some of that ancient tech. And maybe this guy will be the key, to not just helping us.”
Alyssa closed her eyes for a moment and sent the order to Shadow to bed down for the night. It was no use risking the valuable animal. Who was also her soul mate if truth be told. It would be a disaster if some idiot wandered up on the cat at night and took a shot at it. She didn’t want to think of the possibility. She received from the cat the transmission that he had found a nice little cave, too small for many of the local beasts to get in to. Safe for the night.
“You sure he’s the one,” said Derrick, looking at a replay of the monk on the screen just before the fight. “I mean, it could be his brother that we’re looking for.”
“Look at that sword,” said Alyssa as the blade was revealed, then shoved back into its sheath. “That’s ancient tech alright. And my sources say he was the one to open the vault.”
“But the brother has a breast plate of the same tech,” said Derrick.
“Fine,” said Alyssa, shrugging her shoulders. “Then we’ll take both of them tomorrow. If we get a chance.”
“Worried about the fight in space?”
“Of course,” said Alyssa with a frown. “We’re outnumbered, after all. And Admiral Eubanks is not the genius that damned Theocrat Admiral is.”
“Maybe Murphy will come in on our side,” said Derrick, getting up from his seat and grabbing his tray. “I’m going to work out a bit, then hit the rack.”
“I’m going to stay up a while longer,” said Alyssa, watching the replay of the short fight. “And Marine?”
“No longer,” said Derrick with a smile.
“I think he would kick your ass in a fair fight,” she said, gesturing toward the screen.
“But only an idiot would get involved in a fair fight,” said Derrick, walking out of the control room.
* * *
Admiral Tadrick Krishnamurta cursed under his breath as the flag bridge shook to another hit. He quickly checked the ship’s status through his implant, another curse coming to his lips as he noted the hull breach that had taken out one of the missile accelerator tubes.
“Heineman has been hit again,” came the voice of the bridge callout officer, keeping tabs on the fleet action.
The Admiral looked up into the repeater holo in the front of the bridge. The bright circle of a fusion warhead explosion took up a good portion of the holo as it focused in on a single vessel. The bright circle started to fade, revealing the long, thin form of the battle cruiser in question. She was as long as the Murtaw, the flag battleship, so she would have a similar length of acceleration tubes. But she was a third less in thickness, with thinner armor. As the fusion warhead explosion faded the effect of having that thinner armor became apparent, as the entire vessel disappeared in a great blast. The fusion reactors ruptured and the entire vessel converted to bright plasma that filled the screen. When it faded there was nothing left.
Over six hundred men and women, thought the Admiral as the ship disintegrated into plasma. Added to all the rest.
“Sir,” yelled out the caller. “Captain Jackson is asking for instructions.”
The great battleship shuddered again from another impact, this from a KE round. The Admiral did a quick rundown of the ship’s injuries and stopped for a second on the casualty figures. A quarter of the crew, over two hundred and fifty personnel, killed or seriously wounded. One half of his command destroyed or disabled. An enemy that had outnumbered him slightly under two to one, now with three to one odds in his favor. There hadn’t been any other choice. The rules of engagement were to attack the enemy wherever encountered. And the only way to save the people of this world was to engage, no matter how slight the odds of victory. Now it was run or lose everything, and the enemy would still have the presence in this moon system to do what they wanted. Which they would also have if he stood and fought to the last ship.
“All ships, break off,” he ordered over the com. “All ships, break off. Rendezvous at point Delta. Repeat, point Delta.”
The Admiral felt himself pushed back in his couch by the heavy hand of gravity, as the battleship rotated and fired its engines. Two gravities, then three, four, settling down at five. He could hardly breathe, despite the augmented musculature of a spaceman working his intercostals and diaphragm. One of the fleet’s cruisers exploded into plasma before it could break free. Another battleship took a hit, but kept thrusting away, above the plane of the moon system.
“Do you think they’ll follow?” asked the Captain over the com.
“No,” said the Admiral, wincing as he saw that less than half the ships he had brought to the battle were leaving. Much less. “They have what they want.”
* * *
“Shall we give chase, your eminence?” asked the Captain of the Theocracy battleship The Elder Thomas DeRutter.
“What do you think, Colonel Chung?’ asked the Admiral Bishop Jon Gruber, looking over at his subordinate, and the man the mission revolved around.
Nathan Chung looked down his long nose at the Captain, then turned to the Admiral with a slight bow of his two meter height. He ran a hand through the blond stubble on his head and gave back the look from his superior with his ice blue eyes. Of course, as a son of the reigning Patriarch, he felt that no man was his superior, not deep down. And that attitude showed to all.
“I think, Admiral, that we need to concentrate on what we came here for,” rumbled the Colonel. “There is another Republic force on the way, well before our own reinforcements arrive,” he continued, flashing a glare at the Captain to keep the man from saying anything. “I would like to take the target and be gone before they can interfere.”
“I think the original plan is scrapped,” said the Admiral, nodding his head as his hands played with the blood stained prayer beads around his neck. “You will not be going down to his camp and taking him, I think.”
“Their camp is already getting ready for the day,” agreed Chung, gesturing toward the holo tank, which was now showing the surface of the world and the stirring military camp of the barbarians. “I think it best if we use force to take what we want.” The holo switched view, to show a barbarian warrior in mail, with a shimmering breastplate of some advanced substance, yelling to his under officers.
“And you are sure of your target?” asked the Admiral, leaning forward to study the features of the warrior.
“As sure as I can be,” said the Colonel with a shrug of his shoulders. “
Based on what my operatives on the moon have learned, I would say almost ninety percent certainty.”
“Just keep your dogs under control,” said the Captain in a whiny voice.
Chung walked toward the man, his boots sticking to the carpet for a moment on each step. Chung was the same titular rank as the ship’s Captain. His posting to Church Intelligence actually gave him the same power as a commodore, while his lineage gave him as much power as the in place fleet commander. He stopped and glared down at the Captain, a vein throbbing in his temple.
“My Maurids are much more intelligent than many of the humans manning this fleet,” he said in a hissing voice. “Probably more so that many of the officers as well.” He pointed a large finger at the Captain’s face, then turned and walked away. He was feeling rage at the bigoted attitudes of the fools he was saddled with. Fools who thought that non-human meant stupid. The Maurids, found on a small continent of one of the worlds the Theocracy had subjugated, had taken over that continent to the detriment of the humans who had been there. To him that was proof that they were a match for humans.
“Bring me your tasking order in no more than an hour, Colonel,” called the Admiral after him.
Chung turned on his heels and rendered a picture perfect salute. “I will have an operation plan for you within a half an hour.”
“Nothing too complicated, I hope,” said the Captain with a sneer.
“Nothing complicated,” agreed Chung with a nod. “Just hit them hard and knock the hell out of them.”
Chapter Three
Vasus had set just before the sun had risen. The planet had trembled again as the bright orb of the day star had broached the horizon. The men were used to it, even though the frequency was increasing. It caused some concern, not that there was anything they could do about it but leave it in the hands of the Good God. Camp was struck as breakfast was wolfed down. Soon all of the tentage was aboard wagons. This camp was no longer needed. If they won this day they would be in pursuit of their barbarous opponents. If they lost they would be on the run from the enemy’s pursuit. Either way, this ground would be of no use.
Theocracy: Book 1. Page 2