by Joel Babbitt
“Great Matriarch of the Jikkik Clan,” Stey-Jik said formally, and the young matriarch stood up a bit straighter, her sense of dignity strengthened by the respect shown her by the most powerful yazri in her clan. “Do not be deceived by the appearance of this human that stands before you, for he is indeed a brother. This is Mar-Shal of the Mon-Yurrik, the clan of my youth that was destroyed by the great bug at the place called Shattersphere. He was once my platoon leader, my hunt master. And I was once his platoon sergeant, his tree lord. He is like a brother to me. As I have joined this clan, so I would ask that Mar-Shal also be joined to us.”
She looked curiously at the old yazri and did not speak for a long moment. When finally she did speak, it was with curiosity, not the judgment and pronouncement of destiny that matriarchs usually speak on such an occasion.
“Why does he wish me to speak his name before our clan tree?” she asked. “Why does he seek to bind himself to us?”
“He seeks to claim right of justice against Mon-Jonesik, our over-clan lord, who sent assassins against his people,” Stey-Jik answered, maintaining his dignity by not looking her in the eyes.
“Ah, I see,” she said, nodding her head. Reaching tentatively into the folds of her wings, she brought forth a handful of straight sticks, one of which dangled from a leather string. “Here,” she said, holding out her hand to Colonel Alexander, “I speak your name, Mar-Shal of the Mon-Jikkik, here before our great tree.”
Alexander nodded and took the stick, placing it over his head and letting it dangle free on it leather string. “I thank you, my matriarch,” he said.
“Ah, but you have yet to hear your destiny,” she said, a slight touch of mischief in her eyes.
Alexander smiled. “Tell me, my matriarch, what destiny does this life-stick give me?”
The matriarch took the other sticks and threw them at his feet. In spite of themselves, a sense of power and destinies came among them unexpectedly.
“Mar-Shal Mon-Jikkik,” she called out as she saw the sticks fall in a random pattern on the platform floor. She looked up into his eyes. “Your destiny is to dance as a god, and to strike like lightning. You will bring freedom to the oppressed, and death to the oppressor.”
Alexander smiled. “That I will.”
* * *
The procession that led to the high house of the clan lord was not what humans would normally expect. On the ground Colonel Alexander’s troops came by foot, Colonel Alexander and Sergeant Thompson in the lead walking boldly while behind them the rest of the company came with weapons ready scanning the trees. Above them, in the lower boughs of the trees, the young and females of the clan jumped from tree to tree, gliding on their skin flaps like so many flying squirrels. Yet further above them the old warriors of the clan took their place of prominence, flying from one heavy main branch to another, ancestral blades strapped across their aging chests and totems of bone and wood in the shape of necklaces, tassels, and breastplates hanging about them as they flew. Piercing the edges of their skin-flap wings were rows of honor rings, won in battle over their long lives.
The energy in the group was contagious. Even the more dour elder warriors had broad, toothy smiles, excitement showing in their large, nocturnal eyes at the prospect of what was to come. Leading the whole procession, however, Colonel Alexander’s face was grim, determined, and the look of blood was in his eyes. As he reached the base of the clan lord’s great tree, Alexander climbed the rope ladder into the bottom floor of the clan hold with ease.
Arriving at the great platform of the clan lord, Colonel Alexander stepped up onto the broad, wooden platform. The scene was almost surreal, though not unfamiliar to the veteran warrior of many a bug-war campaign. Totems of hair, bone, and carved bits of wood hung on leather strings from the ceiling. Scattered about the platform were several rugs, skins of animals long dead. On the far end of the platform the great seats of the clan lord and clan matriarch were placed against the platform’s only wall, a tall semi-circle of wood that was carved in the likeness of the setting sun. Gathered about the high seats were a cluster of humans, women mostly, scantily clad and sitting on the floor at the feet of a large man with ruddy skin and unruly blond hair, an older version of the man who had just died at Alexander’s feet.
Alexander and Thompson paid no attention to the women, most of whom were little older than teenagers and looked as if they had been cowed into submission. But the two large men that stood one on either side of the high seats kitted out in full battle gear caused them to stop in the center of the platform.
“Jones!” Colonel Alexander called out the name as if it were a challenge.
“Why have you come here?” the large man with unruly blond hair answered. “You dare invade my sanctuary? What right have you?”
All about the edges of the platform yazri, both young and old, were gathering thick like birds as they flew in to see what was happening. There would be blood, this they understood, and none would miss such a thing.
“I will be heard by the matriarch! I claim right of justice!” Alexander growled.
Jones’ eyes narrowed. “You have no cause,” he said, looking about the platform at the many yazri who were gathering, unused to the look of confidence in their eyes; they did not fear him or his men, but instead all sensed that this was a time of destiny and reveled in the moment. A small cluster of the older yazri warriors all began to gather behind Alexander, holding the handles of their ancestral blades and chanting their ancestors’ names to summon forth their power.
“Don’t give me that, you pretender,” Alexander dismissed the clan lord’s words. “I will be heard by the matriarch. You are clan lord; you have no right to hear such a case. Justice is not given to you.”
Through the hole in the center of the platform above a dark figure dropped down between the two men as they stared each other down. Smoke billowed suddenly from the center of the platform where the dark figure had landed. Once it cleared all could see the yazri matriarch in the mist. Standing from a crouch, the silvery letters of lineages and pronouncements of destinies were revealed as she stood slowly, majestically opening her wings for all to see the power of her letters. Around her body were the living vines, encasing her chest and slight shoulders in green, while upon her head was a wreath of leaves and berries.
As she stood up to her full height, the yazri matriarch surveyed the scene. Her human husband, he who had won the title of clan lord by force and claimed her, stood on one end of the platform, while on the other end stood another human who claimed justice as though he were a member of the clan. She looked at Alexander with curiosity, yet sternly.
“You are not of the people, outsider,” she said. “How can you claim right of justice?”
Alexander pulled a leather string out from under his nano-weave armor. On the end of it dangled a small wooden stick. “Matriarch, I am Mar-Shal. I was of the Mon-Yurrik, though that clan is no more. I served with your people in the bug-wars. I was a hunt master for the Dominion, and the yazri who served me called me hunt master and called me one with them.”
“Then you are a warrior without a clan,” the matriarch retorted. “What claim have you here? We are the… Mon-Jonesik.” She said this last without enthusiasm.
“The Mon-Jonesik is a great clan, an over-clan for that matter, with several clan-counts of warriors that serve in its many subject clans,” Alexander said. “This is Stey-Jik,” he said, stepping to one side to allow the same older warrior he had met with before to step forward. “He was my platoon sergeant for a time in the bug-wars. We fought together as brothers against the desolation of the bugs. This night, the matriarch of his son’s clan spoke my name before the tree hold of the Mon-Jikkik. His son is like a father to me… and I his warrior son.” This last he said as he speared Jones with his eyes. “And I demand right of justice against this man, who sent assassins to kill me and my brothers.”
The matriarch held up her arms. “Wait! How can you prove that these assassins were sent b
y the clan lord?”
Sergeant Thompson stepped forward and handed Colonel Alexander the bag. Quickly opening it, Alexander took the head of Peter Jones by its bloody hair and held it up for all to see. “This is my proof!” he growled. “You sent your son to lead the assassin team!”
Throwing the severed head down to the platform, Alexander stripped off his nano-weave armor shirt and drew his blade, then faced the elder Jones in a crouch. “I demand trial by blade!”
The large man’s ruddy skin was red with anger and the pain of loss. His face was a contorted mask of rage and his muscles rippled and bulged all along his shoulders and chest as his anguish played out inside him. Then, without any conscious thought he drew his long knife from its sheath on his barrel chest.
“Very well,” the matriarch said in a low voice as she closed her wings and backed away from the center of the platform to take her seat in the judgment chair. The clan lord had drawn his blade, and such a thing could not be undone.
Jones rushed in rage at the smaller man, slashing with his long blade at the defined muscles of Alexander’s stomach. The colonel jumped back, lithely dodging the slash, then dropping back again and a third time as Jones put all his might into swinging his blade.
Diving to one side, Alexander rolled twice and came up on his feet, spinning quickly to face Jones as the larger man came barreling toward him. With hands outstretched, Alexander called the younger man to him by barring his chest, jumping aside at the last moment and slashing a deep cut into Jones’ right arm.
Jones screamed with rage as he turned again to meet Alexander, not even noticing the blood beginning to drip heavily down his arm. Barreling toward Alexander again, Jones’ superior reach made the colonel drop to the ground to avoid having his neck slashed open. Jones saw the opening and lunged on top of Alexander—but the older man had already rolled to one side and was on his feet before Jones could get up.
Now, seeing his chance, Alexander cut a long slash down the length of the larger man’s back, jumping away just in time to avoid Jones’ wild cut from the ground.
“You’re bleeding, Jones,” Alexander said, the first gleam of victory showing in his eyes.
Jones was breathing heavily by now. He had been on Camallay with its lighter gravity for several years now, and so Colonel Alexander, who had only recently come from the heavier gravity planet Prexlar, was flying and dancing about in comparison to his stumblings. He could also see that Alexander was a master in hand to hand combat—Jones was good, but was no master.
Looking over at the two men in their combat gear who stood to either side of the high seat, Jones nodded then began swinging his long blade back and forth between himself and Alexander, clearly trying to stall.
“What’s wrong, Jones,” Alexander taunted, not even breathing heavily, “you had enough? Too bad, this is to the death!”
Having ducked out of sight, behind the mural of the setting sun that sat behind the high seat, one of the men in combat gear was readying a weapon. By the short tube and the hand-sized dish at the base of it, the weapon was clearly a microwave weapon; a weapon that was meant to cripple with the searing pain and heat it produced from relatively close range, without leaving any mark on the victim’s skin.
Lifting the strange looking device, he steadied it on the edge of the mural while everyone’s attention was focused on the combat in the center of the platform. Then, as he sighted the gun, suddenly he dropped onto one knee, then clutching his bleeding neck he fell over and off the side of the platform as blood spurted from his two severed jugular veins and carotid arteries.
Lowering the kiz’zit slicer from his shoulder, Jim Ryker sat back from one great tree away and blew out the breath he had been holding. Captain Washington took his place on watch in case Jones’ other guard tried anything.
Back on the platform, Jones had two more cuts; a long gash that cut perpendicular through the front of his thigh and a deep puncture wound in his left forearm. All of his cuts were bleeding profusely, and the larger man was beginning to sway back and forth, lunging about unsteadily, swinging wildly in a desperate gamble to catch Alexander.
But Colonel Alexander was not the type to overstretch himself. Even bleeding profusely, the larger man was still quite a danger. Stepping back, he watched Jones; watched the blood dripping down his arm to make his grip on his blade slippery, watched how his left leg wouldn’t hold his weight, and how his eyes were beginning to glaze with pain and with loss of blood.
Stepping forward boldly, Alexander swung his arm about, catching Jones’ forearm with his own to stun the arm. Jones’ blade dropped from his nerveless hand as Alexander punched him in the face. Then, as Jones staggered back, Alexander turned his blade and drove it deep into the center of Jones’ torso, puncturing his diaphragm and driving the blade up into his heart.
Jones’ face took on a look of utter surprise as he staggered back on his heels, the breath completely out of his body. Then, as his eyes rolled back in his head, his lifeless body fell back onto the platform like a tree falling, landing with a crash.
The entire crowd had held their breath as the last maneuvers were executed. Now, as the realization rolled over the crowd, they all broke into loud cheers, hooting, and shrill trills of excitement as they realized that the human who had usurped the clan and oppressed them was finally dead.
Chapter Fourteen
Tan-Jik Mon-Jikkik was an impressive yazri; tall, strong, with a noble look about him, he seemed to Colonel Alexander to be in the express image of his father Stey-Jik from thirty-three years before. As he led the hunt group back through the trees, Alexander squatted at the edge of the platform where Jones lay in his gore. News of the justice claim and the honor battle had traveled quickly, and now he had come home, at Alexander’s invitation, to accept the title that Colonel Alexander would not keep.
The swell of yazri warriors who came behind Tan-Jik as he climbed the tree confidently toward the great platform served to show clearly his popularity with the rest of the clan. As he reached the platform the hooting, whooping, and trills of the warriors and their mates filled the space and echoed off the many branches of the great tree.
Walking with a grim face toward the still form of his brother’s killer, Tan-Jik stopped and stared for a few moments before finally looking over at the other human on the platform. The entire crowd quieted to hear him speak.
“You are the one who my father calls hunt master?” Tan-Jik asked.
“I am,” Alexander answered.
“And you slew the Jones?” he asked.
“I did.”
“Yet now you wish to give the title of over-clan lord to me?” Tan-Jik asked in confusion.
Alexander nodded. “I am your warrior, and you my clan lord. By right, I may give it to you.”
Tan-Jik looked down at the still form lying in his blood on the platform, then looked back at Colonel Alexander. “Very well. I accept your gift,” he said, then, taking his blade from its sheath on his chest, he plunged it deep into the chest of the body lying on the platform.
All about him, the many yazri who had followed him here began a chant. There would be a yazri as clan lord again, and all the people sang their song of joy and victory.
As the yazri celebrated, dancing about their new clan lord in a frenzy of emotion and excitement, Colonel Alexander quietly made his way to the rope ladder at the edge of the platform and climbed down to where his people awaited him.
* * *
“You say your name is Maudry?” Jim Ryker asked the teenage girl who sat clinging the blanket he had given her to her chest. She had been among the women who sat around the great chair where Jones had ruled as over-clan lord, and she was one of three who hadn’t been claimed by the handful of human families that lived among the yazri clan.
“Yes,” the girl answered
“How old are you Maudry?” he asked.
The girl pushed long, stringy red hair back over her ear as she looked up into his eyes tentatively, as
if she had been abused and wasn’t sure of the freedom Alexander’s troops had promised her.
“I’m sixteen in standard years.”
“Where do you come from?” Ryker asked.
“Principay.”
Ryker frowned in surprise. “Why are you here?” he asked.
“My father sold me,” she said, looking down.
Specialist Krrrz came up behind Ryker and showed him the results of the biometric scans on a linker screen. She truly was from Principay—and her family name was Brutian.
“You’re Titus Brutian’s daughter!”
The girl bowed her head deeper, shame evident in the slump of her shoulders.
“Oh, come now, that’s alright,” Ryker said, moving to comfort her. “You’re safe now, Maudry.”
“Will you still let me go free?” she sobbed.
“Of course!” Jim said as he knelt down next to her and hugged the wretched girl. “It’ll be alright, Maudry. The nightmare’s over. They can’t hurt you anymore.”
Maudry turned away, unable to bear the touch of a man. As she cried, Ryker squatted next to her uncomfortably. Eventually, as the girl’s sobs subsided, Ryker laid her back against the tree trunk and stood up, motioning for Doctor Pastore who had been waiting nearby to check her health.
Ryker could clearly see that the doctor was almost obsessively concerned with the three girls who hadn’t been claimed. He couldn’t help but think that the doctor’s own experience of losing her family in the Primus Colony disaster played into her abundance of concern in some way.
“Boss,” Ryker said as he approached Colonel Alexander and Captain Washington.
“What did you find out, Jim?” Alexander asked.
“It appears Commander Brutian gave Jones more than just money to buy his loyalty and turn him to Principay’s side. That’s Titus Brutian’s teenage daughter over there,” he said as he pointed at the bedraggled girl sitting in the dirt with the other women.