On the floor, like a man caught in a burning building, Borge could see clearly, unhindered by the cloying smoke of burning flesh, cloth, and plastic that now blinded anyone standing upright. Smoke from the Warspite’s mortal wounds now filled the decks of the dying ship. The flashing red and yellow coaming lights around the main gangway airlock drew him like a moth to a flame, and he smiled grimly as he low-crawled his way toward it, dragging the all-important case along with him. He had no idea who had started the shooting, perhaps some disgruntled crewman who was jealous that they could leave this doomed hulk while he could not, but it did not matter: Borge would make it. He would reach the airlock where the Golden Pearl was even now docking. He would survive.
But Borge was not a patient man. As the airlock loomed closer, he rose from his crawl and into a crouch, using his legs to propel him faster than could his knees and elbows crabbing along the floor.
Again Warspite rocked from a hit, sending Borge sprawling to the deck, the precious case falling from his grip to bang and slide a few meters back the way he had come as the thunder of the great ship’s armor being penetrated crashed through her hull.
“Dammit!” he cursed as he regained his bearings in the smoke-clogged gangway, his right knee ringing with pain from where it had smashed against the bulkhead when he fell. He started back for the case, lost in the haze–
–and stumbled over something. Looking down, he saw the body of a child at his feet. A Kreelan child.
His blood suddenly ran cold. Reza’s son, a tiny voice in his mind informed him, quite unnecessarily. And where his son was, Reza was no doubt close by. Borge reacted quickly, doing what any politician of his caliber would have done. Seizing the dazed child by the hair with one hand, he drew his personal blaster with the other, pressing the muzzle against the boy’s head. Then Borge put his back up against the wall to prevent any surprises from behind.
It was only then that he noticed the unnatural stillness in the corridor. The fighting had stopped. Only the subaudible thrum of the ship’s engines and a periodic salvo of her guns now and then broke the silence.
“Gard!” he shouted into the swirling smoke. “I’ve got your boy, half-breed! Do you hear me?”
“I hear you.” Reza’s cool voice came from somewhere in the choking smoke roiling through the corridor. “Which is surprising, to hear the voice of a dead man.”
Borge’s brittle laugh cut through the air. “If I’m dead, so is your boy, Reza. Don’t believe I won’t kill him if you make me.”
“Just like you killed Markus Thorella?” Zhukovski’s voice accused from the fog. “Only this time, there will be no body to substitute, no fortune to collect for personal benefit.”
“But there is a fortune, you short-sighted fool, a fortune in victory, a fortune in power that you could not possibly comprehend.” Borge began to back cautiously toward the airlock, dragging Shera-Khan with him. Not quite so dazed now, the boy began to struggle, and Borge did not want to harm his insurance too soon. “Make him stop trying to break free, Reza, or I’ll kill him right now,” he warned.
A few words spoken in Kreelan from the darkness seemed to calm the boy. Perhaps too much.
“That’s better,” Borge said. “Now, there’s a case sitting in the corridor somewhere near you. I want it. Now.”
“What is in it?” Reza asked quietly. Borge could swear that his nemesis was speaking right into his ear, but there was no one to be seen.
“None of your business,” Borge snapped. “Just hand it over.”
The case suddenly skittered along the floor, coming to rest at Borge’s feet. “Pick it up,” he told Shera-Khan.
The boy did not move.
“Pick it up, damn you,” Borge hissed as he pushed the muzzle harder against Shera-Khan’s temple.
As Shera-Khan leaned down to do as he had been told, a hollow thump, followed by the airlock coaming flashing green, announced the arrival of the Golden Pearl.
“I’m going to see your planet burn, Reza,” Borge shouted into the smoke, although his eyes were still riveted to the inboard airlock hatch and the telltales on the control panel. The outer lock was cycling open. Only a minute left before he was free from this floating coffin. “If you manage to make it to a lifeboat, you might have a chance to see it for your–”
Shera-Khan bolted from his grasp, slashing at his arms with his claws as he leaped into the smoke-shrouded darkness.
“Little bastard!” Borge cursed, raising his weapon to shoot the boy in the back.
As his finger convulsed on the trigger, a huge shadow suddenly materialized from the mist between the gun and the retreating boy. The blaster’s energy bolt caught Tesh-Dar squarely in the middle of the chest, flaring her armor white with heat as it penetrated to the aged and dying flesh beneath.
But Borge was not to receive a second chance. One shot was all he would get. As if taking candy from a comatose child, Tesh-Dar slashed out with one hand, her claws severing Borge’s arm at the wrist.
Borge opened his mouth to scream, not in pain, for he felt none yet, but in fear. He saw Tesh-Dar as the incarnate devil of his nightmares, the bogeyman come to horrid life. Her mouth opened to reveal fangs that could rip his throat open, but that was not Tesh-Dar’s way. She did not care for the foul taste of human blood. Instead, she plunged the talons of her other hand into his ribcage. As she lifted him from the floor, his jaw hanging open in a scream of terrified agony, she let out her own roar of anguish and pain, and righteous vengeance upon an evil that fed upon its own kind. Slowly did her fingers close, drawing her talons together around his furiously pumping heart. He clawed at her hand, his throat now making hollow gagging sounds as his lungs filled with blood and collapsed. With one final, titanic heave, Tesh-Dar tore his heart, still beating, from his chest. She threw her head back and roared in triumph, crushing the disembodied organ in her Herculean grip.
And then, like a great stone pillar with a tiny but mortal flaw, she collapsed to the floor, her bloodied hands covering the still-smoking hole in her own chest.
Reza was there to catch her, and he gently, lovingly, lay her down to rest. “My priestess,” he said softly. “My mother–”
She signed him to silence before putting a hand against his face. He held it in one of his own to ease the trembling he felt in hers. “My son,” she said softly, “the Race is in your hands, now; our salvation is in your love for Her. Go to Her now… quickly. You must save Her… or we all shall face eternity… in darkness.” A tiny tremor ran through her, and her hand clamped painfully around his. “May thy Way be long and glorious… my beloved son.”
The strength passed from her hand as her eyes closed, her spirit fleeing her body for what should have been paradise, but without the Empress’s light could only be a cold and terrifyingly lonely Hell. A Hell he had seen for himself.
“Reza,” Enya whispered behind him, “why… why did she do this? Why didn’t you stop her? You could have killed Borge without… without this.”
Reza gently unclasped the band and its honors from around Tesh-Dar’s neck. Now that her life had passed from her body, the ancient living metal clasp surrendered to his trembling fingers. “She did it because it was her Way,” he told her softly.
“I do not mean to intrude on emotional discussion,” Zhukovski interjected, “but time becomes short. Security will be here any mom–”
The airlock at the end of the gangway suddenly cycled open to reveal four ISS guards in battle dress.
“Where’s the pres–” one of them began before seeing Borge’s mangled body and the three humanoids in Kreelan armor.
The ISS sergeant’s observation of the gory scene was cut short long before he or his men could raise their weapons. His eyes had just shifted from Borge’s body to Reza when Shera-Khan’s shrekka sheared his head cleanly from his torso. The head toppled to the deck like a bowling ball, the armored helmet clattering to a stop near one of the other guards’ feet. The now headless torso spasmed as if in surpris
e, and a fountain of blood from the severed carotid artery sprayed the lock’s ceiling before the corpse toppled backward into the airlock.
Nicole shot two of the others, while Braddock finished off the last.
“Let’s go,” Braddock said tightly, gesturing toward the waiting gangway into the smaller ship as he watched the blast doors down one of the other corridors start to cycle open. “More bad guys are on the way.”
His last sentence was punctuated by a sudden burst of rifle fire that filled the corridor with crimson and emerald beams of lethal energy as a score of ISS guards rushed through the doors.
“I will cover you!” Zhukovski shouted into Reza’s ear, and with his good hand he snatched up a pulse rifle from one of the fallen guards, training it with evident skill on the men advancing upon them. Zhukovski shot one, then another before he was forced back against the wall under a hail of return fire.
“Admiral, we can’t leave you!” Nicole shouted above the riot of gunfire that was becoming uncomfortably accurate, as she loosed her own barrage on their attackers.
“Get on that ship, Carré!” Zhukovski shouted furiously. “That is direct order!”
After a moment’s hesitation, everyone started toward the airlock, stumbling backward through the smoke and stench of ozone and scorched flesh as they sought the safety of the Pearl’s main airlock, all the while firing back at the approaching guards.
“You, too, Reza,” the old admiral said. “My work is done in this life. You have much yet to do. Good luck, my friend.” With a devilish grin, without fear or remorse, he turned his attention back to his chosen enemy.
Reza wanted to thank him in some way, but there were no words. He said a silent prayer to the Empress for this man whose courage would have been the envy of the peers, then turned to make his way to the Pearl.
As he passed Borge’s body, he noticed the black case that had been the focus of the dead usurper’s final moments. Wondering what the man could have considered so important, he picked it up by the bloodied handle before dashing up the textured metal ramp and into the airlock.
The armored door slid closed behind him as Zhukovski’s final battle raged toward its inevitable conclusion.
Fifty-Four
Reza immediately sensed that something was wrong; the aura of his surroundings had changed, darkened, as soon as he set foot inside the Golden Pearl and the airlock had cycled closed behind him.
Nicole, Tony, and Enya had already dashed for the cockpit, a muffled scuffle announcing that the Golden Pearl had just had a change in flight crew. Reza felt the Pearl lurch as she separated from the dying Warspite. In seconds, the sleek ship was accelerating toward the Empress moon as Reza had instructed, dodging through the web of energy fire and torpedoes from the massive battle raging around them.
“What is it, Father?” Shera-Khan asked in a whisper as Reza drew his sword. His own hand reached instinctively for one of the remaining shrekkas. He did not have his father’s special senses, but he could sense the change in him, even without hearing his Bloodsong, as he could sense that hot had turned to cold.
“I know not, my son,” he replied quietly as he set down the black case on a nearby table to leave his hands free for fighting. “Something is amiss; beware.”
Together, the two warriors warily advanced down the chandelier-bedecked hallway that led toward the library.
***
The first thing Jodi became aware of was an unfamiliar taste in her mouth. There was blood, to be sure. But there was also something different, something she had never tasted before, but from descriptions she had heard from other women, she had no doubt as to what it was. Semen.
Forcing back the nausea that rose in her throat, she feebly spat the sticky substance from her mouth, along with some blood and the debris from a broken tooth. The effort resulted in a red-hot lance of pain from her stomach and ribs, and it was all she could do to keep from moaning aloud. The mixture of blood, semen, and enamel bubbled from between her lips to ooze down the side of her face in a warm, coppery stream.
With what seemed a titanic effort, she managed to pry one eye open, the other resisting her will with the force of the swelling that had deformed the right side of her face. Beyond the panorama of the carpet, stained with her own blood, she saw the blurred image of a combat boot, then its mate as it slowly swam into focus. For now, the vision of the two boots on the bloody rug was the extent of her world.
“Shouldn’t Cerda have checked in with us?” a voice from somewhere above asked in a high, nasal voice. “Maybe we should go check on the president, or something.”
“Shut up,” said another, deeper voice, one familiar with being in charge of any situation. “If you want to brown nose, just butt snorkel with Cerda and keep away from Borge. Treak,” he called to a third, “go forward and see what the hell’s going on. Find out what we’re supposed to do with this trash.” A boot prodded Jodi’s buttocks, but she only felt a vague pressure, nothing more. She was numb below the waist, and a tentative command to curl one of her toes disappeared into darkness, unheeded. Her lower body was paralyzed.
“Sure, sarge,” someone answered casually, and she heard heavy soles clump toward an exit, a door slid open–
–and then all hell broke loose.
“Look out!” someone cried as a lion’s roar ripped through the room, followed by her captors screaming and shouting. A few shots thundered out, and Jodi could see a rush of booted feet running toward the door.
And there was another sound, one she recognized instantly as the lethal whisper of a shrekka whirling through the air. One man’s scream was cut off in mid-sentence, and Jodi heard two distinct thumps as his severed head and then his body hit the deck. She also heard the distinct rhythm of a blade scything through the air, armor, and flesh with equal ease.
The Kreelans have boarded, she thought, her hopes for rescue dying, replaced now by the hope that her torment would soon be ended.
Suddenly, the sounds of fighting were gone, and the only sign visible to Jodi that a battle had raged was the curling smoke that stung her single good eye.
A sandaled foot stepped into her view, and she closed her swelling eye, waiting for the final blow to come. If nothing else, she thought, the Kreelans had never sought to make humans suffer, as other humans did. Whatever their motives for war, it was to fight and die. To kill the enemy or be killed oneself. The desire for torture and suffering that Man inflicted upon others of his own kind was absent in the hearts and minds of the Kreelans. Death would come quickly, now, painlessly.
“Jodi?” she heard a hoarse whisper from lips she had once kissed.
“Reza?” she said, not willing to believe that her luck, perhaps, was finally turning, and for the better. “Is it you?” She tried to lift her head enough to see his face. The pain that was her reward left a moaning cry in her throat and a savage, flaming agony shooting up and down her spine.
She felt his hands tenderly grip her shoulders, but for a long time she could say nothing, a scream of raw pain issuing from her throat like a wall of water exploding from a breached dam as he tried to turn her over. After a time, it subsided into a dull throb that pulsed with every beat of her heart, and her mind was finally able to command her tongue to form words that Reza might hear, might understand.
“I… I think my back’s broken, Reza,” she whimpered. She hated the way she sounded, helpless, terrified, but she could not deny, even to herself, that it was true. “Thorella…” She cringed at the sound of the man’s name, even from her own lips, “Thorella beat me… he…” She could not say what else he had done to her.
“Hush,” Reza said, biting back the wave of black rage that rose in his soul. “Be still. I will–”
“Father,” Shera-Khan called from the next room, his voice conveying concern, apprehension, but no fear; there was no threat to him in there. “There is another like her in here.”
“What…” Jodi rasped, “what did he say?”
“Nothing,” R
eza lied. “Be still.”
Uncoiling like a snake about to strike, Reza covered the distance to where his son stood in three paces.
“Eustus,” he whispered, his heart catching in his throat. His friend hung in the air, suspended from the heavy chandelier above. His tormentors had tied his elbows together behind his back with a thin metal cable, pulled so tight that it had cut into the flesh of his arms, and then hoisted him from the ground. Then they had beaten him with what could only be a Kreelan grakh’ta, the whip with seven barbed tails like the one that had once scourged Esah-Zhurah’s back.
Handing his sword to his son, he said, “Cut him down.” Then he held onto Eustus’s motionless body while Shera-Khan sliced the cruel metal wire that bound his father’s friend. Ever so gently, Reza carried him into the other room, laying him next to Jodi so he could tend to them both. With a claw of his right hand, he severed the wire that bound Eustus’s elbows, letting his shoulders and back spring back into something like their normal position.
Eustus let out a groan.
“Reza,” Jodi asked, “what’s going on? What is it?” Lying as she was, she could not see any of the three other living people in the room, only two of the mangled bodies of the ISS men who had raped her. Somehow, it was not as comforting a sight as she had at first thought it would be.
“It is Eustus,” he told her as he pointed out to Shera-Khan a medikit that hung on one of the bulkheads. The boy immediately scrambled to retrieve it.
“How… how is he?”
“Alive,” Reza said softly, fighting to keep his hands from trembling with the anger coursing through his veins. Thoughts of dark vengeance intermingled with compassion for his injured and beaten friends, friends who had become his family in this strange world that called itself humanity.
Taking the medikit from Shera-Khan, he told the boy in the New Tongue, “Go to the flight deck and get help. Tell them that Jodi and Eustus are aboard, and are hurt badly.”
In Her Name Page 92