“Rest easy,” Reza said, his hand gripping her shoulder gently.
“You have chosen your companions wisely, my son,” Tesh-Dar told him as she released Nicole. Her own eyes blazed with the heat of the fire that had burned in her heart her entire life, save the last few agonizing days since the Empress’s heart had closed itself away from Her Children. The feeling was at once invigorating and monumentally depressing, for she realized that she might never again feel it before she passed into the unknown darkness where once the Ancient Ones had sung Her glory, but now lay silent as a timeless tomb. “As were you, she, too, is worthy of the Way.”
“Captain!” an alien voice suddenly intruded. “Are you all right in there? Do you require assistance?”
“No,” Nicole managed, shaking off the last of the vision, or whatever it was. “No, I am fine.”
“I think it’s time you came out, ma’am,” the voice of the ISS sergeant said. His tone told her that her made-up orders and threats were wearing thin. Behind her, the mantrap began to cycle open.
“We shall speak again,” Reza told her. “Soon.”
Nicole nodded. “Oui, mon ami. Soon.” Without another word, she stepped into the cylinder, her eyes fixed on Reza as the force field snapped on and the door swiftly closed.
Fifty-Two
Eustus regained consciousness face down, his cheek pressing numbly into what had once been a priceless original Persian rug that was now soaked and stained with blood from the half dozen cuts in his face.
“Camden,” he heard someone saying urgently, “can you hear me?”
He tried to say “Yes,” but it came out through his battered lips and swollen jaw like “Memph.” He tasted blood and spat out the glassy remains of what had once been an upper incisor.
He felt himself being rolled over, and he groaned involuntarily from the pain. Mostly bruises, he thought automatically, his mind long accustomed to categorizing the type of pain his body felt. No spearing pain or grating bones; nothing was broken. But the pain of the bruises and contusions were enough to bring tears to his swollen eyes.
“Jesus, Eustus, you look like hell.” Forcing his swollen eyes just a little wider while trying to blink away the tears, Eustus could barely make out the dark-faced form hovering above him.
“Commander… Mackenzie?” The face nodded. “Where are we?”
“We’re aboard the Golden Pearl,” she said as she tore a strip of her undershirt off and began to blot away some of the blood from Eustus’s face. “It’s the ship that Reza and I took from Earth. But that’s a story for another time. What the devil happened to you, Marine? Who did this to you?”
“Don’t know for sure,” he slurred. “Looked like ISS types, but that couldn’t be.”
Jodi looked at him strangely. “Yes, I’m afraid it could, Eustus,” she told him. “You were arrested, I take it. Do you have any idea why?”
“They wanted me to kill Reza,” he told her.
“Who? Who did?”
“Don’t know.” He winced as she accidentally blotted over a particularly nasty gash, where one of his assailants had landed a blow with a set of brass knuckles. “The commodore ordered me to do it, but I don’t know where exactly the orders came from. All I know is that she didn’t seem to care for them any more than I did.” He had known that Marchand was putting on an act. She was too good an officer to have done otherwise.
“I guess you refused, didn’t you?” she asked.
He nodded, feeling his neck muscles spasm with the effort. “Yeah, I gave them the ‘hell no’ routine, and found myself charged with treason for refusing to commit murder. Imagine that.” He shook his head, careful not to interrupt the rhythm of the blacksmith’s hammer banging in his skull. “After you and Reza were taken off a while ago,” he went on as Jodi slowly helped him into a sitting position, “they brought me here and half a dozen goons in ISS uniforms paralyzed me and then took turns remapping my face.”
Jodi smiled. “It’s a definite improvement, Camden.”
Eustus managed a weak smile. “Thanks loads, commander.” He suddenly turned serious. “Commander, I’m not one normally prone to foul language, but just what the fuck is going on?”
“Maybe I can fill you in,” came a voice from the doorway. Silhouetted was a huge man in a Marine uniform, with four other, darker, forms behind him.
“Thorella,” Eustus hissed.
“That’s General Thorella to you, Marine,” he shot back icily as he and four ISS guards entered the room, sealing the door behind them. Just before it closed, Eustus glimpsed two more figures outside. “It seems you still have a lot to learn about basic military etiquette.”
“That’s a pretty big word for a Neanderthal like you, general,” Jodi said. She came to her feet, standing between Thorella and his men, and Eustus, who was still unable to stand. “Or should I call you by your real name… Anton Borge?”
Thorella laughed. “Don’t be an idiot, commander,” he told her casually as he took another step closer. “Anton Borge died a long, long time ago, the victim of a tragic accident.” The smile. “As you know, of course.”
Jodi felt chilled under his black, lifeless stare. Except that it wasn’t lifeless. Not this time. There was a ripple, a crawling twinkle, like light reflecting from oozing crude oil, or a parasite boring its way just below dark and dank soil, that she saw there now. “You’ll never get away with what you’ve done, Anton,” she told him, standing her ground. “You’re going to hang.”
“I don’t think so,” he said quietly, eerily, as he stepped closer. “And you should not be so concerned with the past as with the present… and the immediate future.”
“You bastard,” Eustus growled. He recognized the men with Thorella as the ones who had beaten him. “You’re behind all this, aren’t you?”
“I see you need another lesson,” Thorella said pleasantly. Before either Jodi or Eustus could react, Thorella landed a sharp kick with his rough-soled boots on the left side of Eustus’s head, sending him sprawling across the floor.
“Jesus!” Jodi exclaimed. “Thorella, for the love of God–”
“You still don’t understand what’s happening, do you?” Thorella said, turning his attention from Eustus and back to her. “This isn’t some petty boot camp game, Mackenzie. This is life and death, and I get to play God.”
The dark form that she had seen wriggling in his eyes had transformed itself from a burrowing maggot to a glistening hydra, filled with hate and lust.
“You’re insane,” she said, her voice faltering as she took a step back, away from him. “Bug-fuck crazy.”
“Funny you should mention that word,” Thorella said, his smile gleaming dully. “Fuck, I mean. I’ve heard that you’ve never had a man. Well, my dear, this is your lucky day. You’re going to have a bunch of men, all at once.” He nodded his head at the four men with him who now seemed a lot closer than they had been only a moment before, and they all wore the kind of smile that the lowlifes she had encountered saved only for particularly attractive women.
“No!” Eustus shouted from behind them, weakly propelling himself at the knot of men that was closing around Jodi.
“Hold him,” Thorella said contemptuously as two of the ISS men easily deflected Eustus’s attack and pinned his arms painfully behind his back. “Make him watch. You never know, Camden,” he said congenially, “you might learn something.” He turned back to Jodi. “Now, bitch, you can have this easy, or–”
Jodi chose that moment to strike, aiming a kick at Thorella’s left knee, her bellow of fury mixed with stark fear filling the room.
Thorella dodged it without noticeable effort. While Jodi was good, having learned her skills the hard way, in combat, Thorella had had years of close combat training and field experience, and was one of the most physically fit human beings in existence.
“–or the hard way,” he concluded. A huge fist arced out like a steel piston, striking her right collarbone, which snapped with a nauseating
crunch.
Jodi screamed, her left hand reflexively reaching for the source of the electrifying pain that flashed through her body. Thorella casually reached out and grabbed her hand, spun her around, then brutally yanked it up and backward, forcing her hand almost to her neck and nearly dislocating her shoulder. Slamming her face-first into the wall, he took a handful of her hair in his other hand and began to rhythmically smash her face against the unyielding plastisteel, leaving smears of blood from her torn lips and battered nose on the antique white finish.
As she began to slide down the wall, battered senseless, her legs losing their strength, he took the opportunity to land a fist over each kidney, smiling to himself as he heard the satisfying snapping of some of her ribs.
“Stop it!” Eustus was screaming. “Stop it! You’re killing her!”
He let go of Jodi, who slid to the floor in a groaning heap, and turned to Eustus. “That’s the idea,” he said happily before landing a fist in Eustus’s solar plexus. Eustus collapsed in a gasping heap.
“Oh, look at that,” he said, mocking Jodi as she tried to crawl away from him. “What’s wrong, commander? Did I upset you? Here, let me help you.” He reached out and took another handful of Jodi’s hair, yanking her to her feet. “How do you feel, commander?”
“Fuck… you… asshole,” she sputtered, blood trickling down her chin.
“A woman with spirit, gentlemen,” he said to the others, who nodded approvingly. “But I’m afraid, my dear, that it’s you who are going to get fucked in the asshole.” With an easy movement, he slammed Jodi up against a polished oak table.
“No,” she whispered. “Please, don’t…”
“What’s the matter, Mackenzie?” he cooed as he removed his illegal Kreelan knife from an ankle sheath. “You want this, I know you do. A good fucking from a man will do wonders for a dyke bitch like you.” He inserted the knife blade at the back of her pants and started to cut. The sharp edge whispered down the cleft of her buttocks, parting the heavy material of her uniform and underwear like they were paper. When the blade reached the inseam, he stopped. Jodi felt the cold steel disappear.
“Goddamn you, Thorella,” she whispered, tears welling in her eyes as her body quivered with helpless rage and fear. “God damn you to hell.”
Thorella said nothing. Instead, he pulled her back a ways from the table and reinserted the blade, this time in the front of her pants, the blade cutting toward her crotch. He was leaning heavily against her now, and she could feel his throbbing erection against her exposed buttocks.
“Help, me, Father,” she whispered to herself. “Please.” She tried to struggle away, but Thorella was too strong. “Please…”
The blade left a thin trace of blood as it just barely cut the skin on its way down her quivering belly to her pubic mound, and then down, down. With a tiny hiss, the material parted. Thorella roughly pulled the halves of her pants down each leg with his knife hand while his other held her head pinned to the table.
“Thorella,” Eustus rasped, “please don’t do this. I’ll do anything you want…”
“You’ll do anything that I want anyway, Camden,” Thorella said harshly, his breathing now labored. “And after I fuck her, I might just do the same to you.”
Too rushed by his raging lust to use the knife, Thorella dropped it to the floor and used his bare hands to rip open the back of Jodi’s blouse and its built in bra. He tore away the fabric, ripping it from her body to let it fall to the floor like trash. His free hand groped for her breasts, squeezing them hard, bruising the tender flesh, pinching the nipples until they bled.
Jodi bit her tongue to keep from crying out. She tasted a fresh surge of copper as blood flooded her mouth. Think of something, she ordered herself desperately. Do something…
But there was nothing to be done. She felt Thorella’s hand working at his pants, freeing the pulsating serpent within. She grunted in agony as he forced himself into her with a brutal thrust, crushing her thighs against the table’s edge.
The last thing she heard was Eustus, screaming for Thorella to stop, his voice oddly muffled by Thorella’s frenzied panting.
But then her mind shut down, locking itself away in a tiny place where light and love ruled over the darkness of men’s hearts, and the world was still kind.
Fifty-Three
From the end of the flag bridge where the main view screen was located, Borge began his speech to the ships that had reached their final rendezvous point before making the hyperspace jump that would take them to the Kreelan homeworld.
“Men and women of the Fleet,” he began, his face beaming with what was both genuine sincerity and a maniacal belief in his vision of his own empire-to-be, “this day shall be one not long forgotten in the history of the Confederation. For a century have we found ourselves locked in mortal combat with an alien enemy, an enemy who attacked us for no reason, and who attempted to exterminate our people, an attempt that has been in vain. We have paid our way in blood to the threshold where we now stand, and it is time now to make the enemy pay in kind a thousand-fold.” He turned to L’Houillier. “Admiral, you may give the word.”
L’Houillier did not hesitate. “Prepare to jump,” he ordered. He exchanged a glance with Zhukovski, who stood unobtrusively near one of the bridge’s three exits.
A moment later, Zhukovski quietly disappeared.
Amid the cheering throughout the three thousand ships of the great fleet, klaxons blared to announce the imminent jump into hyperspace. The pilots of the hundreds of fighters and attack craft that had been launched at this last rendezvous point snuggled up close to their mother ships, trying to make sure they were captured in the surrounding hyperdrive field and not left behind when the bigger ships jumped. It was a terribly dangerous maneuver, but Laskowski’s plan had called for it, and the president had ordered it done.
L’Houillier turned to Laskowski. “Admiral, execute the jump,” he ordered.
“Aye, aye, sir,” she said sharply, turning to the battery of fleet controllers who were clustered around a myriad of consoles in a darkened alcove at the rear of the flag bridge. “Execute!” she snapped.
A moment later, under control of the Warspite’s straining navigational computers, thousands of human warships disappeared from their dark and lonely rendezvous point, leaving behind nothing but ripples in the fabric of empty space.
***
The jump was a short one, Reza noted silently. He felt the first tremor in his flesh that had always announced to him that they had bridged the gap between normal space and what was beyond, followed a few short minutes later by the second tremor indicating their return to normal space.
“We have arrived,” he told Tesh-Dar and Shera-Khan. “We are home. It will soon be time for us to depart this place.”
“The animals will not allow us to leave, my son,” Tesh-Dar noted. For some reason she could not explain, her health had markedly improved since her joining with Reza’s human friend. Perhaps it was the breath of purity that flowed from the woman’s vision, a legacy that Reza had left her when his blood had mingled with hers; perhaps it was only the final gasp of her body as it sought to stave off Death for but a while longer. No matter, she counseled herself. I shall do all in my power to return Reza to Her, and to see that I die with honor, in battle. “We shall have to fight them. The oath you swore to not spill the blood of your birth must be broken by deed as much as word.”
“And so shall it be,” Reza answered. “My honor do I forfeit for Her sake.” He looked away. “No sacrifice may be too great.”
He felt Tesh-Dar’s hand on his arm. “Your honor is your love for Her, Reza,” she told him gently. “Your debt to your forebears have you paid, ever since the very first day that you returned to them from the Empire.”
“I am with you, Father,” Shera-Khan told him quietly, but with a solemnity in his voice that Reza would always remember. His son would be a great warrior someday. If only he survived.
“You honor you
r mother well, my son,” he said.
The lights suddenly dimmed, and the entire hull reverberated with artificial thunder.
“The battle is joined,” Reza said, coming to his feet. “Soon, now. We must be prepared.”
***
“Merde, admiral,” L’Houillier shouted, “I ordered you to disperse the fleet! We are packed in here like sardines!”
“But–”
“Another word and you are relieved,” he snarled. “You can go and have your beloved president relieve me of duty, but until then you are under my command and by God you will follow my orders!”
Such an exchange normally might have wrought complete, dumbfounded silence on the flag bridge. But even the curses of the Grand Admiral were lost in the frantic hubbub of the flag and ship’s bridge staffs as they sought to make order out of the chaos that had erupted when the Armada dropped back into normal space after the last jump.
In the background was the main flag bridge viewscreen, and what it showed no human eyes had ever before witnessed, nor would they again. An assemblage of Confederation warships that swarmed through the skies of the alien homeworld, clashing with an equal, if not superior, armada that bore the runes of the enemy that Humanity had been fighting for nearly a century. Dozens of ships, most of them Kreelan, had already died, their death throes marked by flaring explosions that left nothing behind but slagged hulks and clouds of iridescent gas. Tens of thousands of energy bolts, crimson and green, joined hundreds of ships in the blink of an eye, bringing death to some, victory to others. And amid the great warships darted clouds of fighters.
But the human ships were at a great tactical disadvantage. In the initial deployment formation that Laskowski had chosen, the conical groups of human ships could only bring their forward batteries to bear, while many of the Kreelan ships, disorganized as they were, could bring their entire broadsides into action against the invaders. On the oceans of ancient Earth, this had been known as “crossing the T.” It was a disastrous disadvantage that L’Houillier was desperately trying to redress.
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