“Yes,” he said, “they could have.” Reza nodded toward the light that swirled as if something alive dwelt within. “They tried to reach Her, the Empress, through that,” he explained quietly, “to save Her, to save the Empire itself. But the light…” He paused, a chill creeping up his spine. “The light is the essence of the guardians of the First Empress’s spirit. It is a barrier, a fire that burns hot as the sun.”
“Like in the cave, on Erlang…” Enya said slowly.
“You’re right,” Eustus murmured, a chill running down his spine at the eerie glow. “The light – it looks the same.”
“But why here?” Nicole demanded. “Why now?”
“Because this was to be the time the circle closed,” Reza told her, “the time when the First Empress’s spirit rejoined with us, and fused Her Own power with that of the living Empress.”
“That’s what was in the crystal heart,” Enya said quietly, “the spirit of this First Empress.” She had no idea how such a thing was possible, but she had once read that the technology of an advanced civilization would seem like magic to more primitive people. And the Empire had been around for a very, very long time. Humans had been plying the stars for hundreds of years. The Kreelans had been a spacefaring race for thousands.
“Yes, the crystal heart,” Reza said, “the vessel containing the spirit of the First Empress, whose power – and spirit – Esah-Zhurah also inherited, making Her the most powerful Empress, the most powerful Kreela, ever born. But with her heart and spirit broken, all the Empire was cast into darkness.” He looked again at the swirling wall of light that blazed defiantly above them. “And that is the power of the Imperial Guard,” he told them. “You saw their physical remains in the chamber on Erlang. Now do you witness the power of their spirit.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Braddock asked. “Won’t it kill you, too?”
“My blood is Her blood,” he said cryptically. “My heart is Her heart, my spirit Her spirit. And my love shall be Her love, Her life.” He turned to Nicole. “I must challenge them, to fight them as is our Way. If I do not survive,” he told her, “I would ask that you and Tony… care for Shera-Khan.”
“I will fight beside you,” Shera-Khan proclaimed fiercely, his talons tightly gripping his sword in want of battle.
Reza held the young warrior’s shoulders, his own talons digging into the hardened metal of Shera-Khan’s armor as he met his son’s gaze with his own. “I am your father,” he told him softly in the rapid lilt of the New Tongue, “and you are my son, blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh. Proud am I of you, of what you are, and of the great warrior you will become as you follow the Way. Many battles have you yet to fight, and great victories shall you win for Her honor. But not this day. Not here, not now. This battle was preordained upon the deathbed of Keel-Tath in a prophecy that has passed from mothers to their daughters for thousands of generations, and this is the day of reckoning.” He smiled at Shera-Khan, the Kreelan way, wishing he could wipe away the black stripes of the mourning marks on his son’s face as he might the salty streaks of his own tears. “To fight are we born, I know,” he told him, softer still, “and so it is difficult not to seek out the Challenge that to your heart calls. But patience is a skill well-suited to the warrior, Shera-Khan, and patience this day must be yours.”
Shera-Khan nodded as Kreelans do, and said, “What shall become of me should you… not return?”
Reza nodded toward Nicole and Braddock. “They are my peers, fellow warriors of my old race; they are my friends, my family. The woman carries my blood in her veins, the blood of the Empress; our ways are not alien to her. Should I fail you, should the Empress die, you must go with them, for they will care for you with the love I would show you, that your mother held for you since the day of your birth. They shall guide you to the Way.”
Shera-Khan lowered his head. “It shall be as you wish, Father,” he said quietly, knowing that, if his father failed in his mission, his life would be meaningless, his spirit without hope of redemption in the Afterlife. But this weakness he would not show the warrior priest who called him Son.
“I love you, my son,” Reza said, suddenly finding the boy in his arms, embracing him fiercely. “May thy Way be long and glorious.”
With a final hug, the two separated. “Follow me,” Reza said to the others as he began to climb the steps he had not seen since he was a young man.
Like tiny but determined ants climbing a great mountain, the six of them ascended the ancient stone stairway toward Hell.
***
“Have you been able to hail them?” Thorella snapped at the assault command ship’s captain.
“No, sir,” he answered. “I only get the IFF beacon, nothing else.”
Thorella chewed his lip nervously. They had picked up the Golden Pearl’s signature heading down to the surface. Why is it here? he wondered. He could understand the president’s desire to bring the ship down to witness their victory, although he considered such a vain action to be nothing short of stupid. But why would it wind up inside a landing bay right at the top of what the Navy had considered an impregnable tower? Why had the president not contacted him to tell him what he was doing? And why had they left no one in the ship to monitor communications?
“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. Turning to the comms officer, he said, “Contact Warspite. I want confirmation that the president got on board the yacht.”
There was a beat of silence in the little ship’s combat center.
“Well?” Thorella demanded angrily.
“Warspite’s gone, sir,” the captain said quietly. How many thousands of sailors had died in these last hours, he thought, and this fool was not even aware of the destruction of the fleet’s flagship. “We won’t be getting any confirmation – or anything else, for that matter – from her. Southampton’s flying Admiral Laskowski’s flag, now. She’s in overall command.”
“Contact Southampton, then!” Thorella ordered, angered by the man’s impertinence. The significance of what he had just said, that the Confederation fleet had lost its flagship, was lost in the immediacy of finding out what had happened to the president.
A few moments passed, in which the necessary inquiries were made. “Southampton cannot confirm the president’s safe transfer to the Golden Pearl,” the comms officer announced. “They only know he was supposed to board her.”
That clinched it. “Take us into that landing bay,” he ordered the ship’s captain, “and set us down beside the yacht. Lieutenant Riggs,” he said to the leader of the command ship’s platoon of Marines, “I want your platoon standing by to secure this ship from attack, but no one is to enter the Golden Pearl without my express permission.” There were things in the yacht that he would rather not have the Marines see, lest they start asking awkward questions. “Is that understood?”
The ship captain nodded unenthusiastically, convinced the Marine general had just lost the last of his marbles, while the Marine second lieutenant, fresh from training and eager to please, barked a hearty, “Yes, sir!”
It took only a few minutes for the command ship to reach its destination. Thorella had already gone over the status of his units with the ops officer. He had hoped that there would be at least a single regiment free to leapfrog up to what looked like undefended high ground. But they were all heading to their primary and secondary objectives, already a long way from their dropships.
Thorella would be on his own.
Fifty-Seven
The climb up the steps had left the humans out of breath by the time they reached the top. When Enya had asked the question of the practicality of an elevator, Shera-Khan shook his head in a practiced human gesture.
“The Empress ascends to the throne each day step by step,” he told her in Standard, “a symbol that She favors none, that She loves all of Her Children. Great warrior or simple porter of water, the highest among the peers or the lowest, She considers the needs of each on Her way to the throne.”
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“I wish our own leaders cared as much for their people,” Braddock murmured.
But any thoughts of the climb vanished when they reached the great dais. The view, like being atop a mountain peak overlooking a forest of priceless art, would have been stunning were it not for the malevolent wall of cyan light that swirled in front of them. The thunder of bombs exploding outside, in the city, reverberated throughout the great dome just as the first hint of smoke reached them, here at the pinnacle of the Empire’s heart.
“I can feel them,” Nicole murmured as she looked into the swirling blue wall before them. She wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the sensation of unseen eyes watching her, unblinking, hostile.
“You must wait here,” Reza told them as he drew his sword. He, too, could feel them, the Guardians. He felt a surge of heat through his body and heard the faint strains of the lonely solo that had been his Bloodsong for longer than he cared to remember. This shall be my final Challenge, he knew. “No matter what happens,” he told them, “do not go into the light. Do not so much as touch it. If I fail…” he paused, “If I fail, return to the ship as fast as you can and try to return to human space. There will be nothing left for you here but death.”
“Reza,” Nicole said softly beside him. He turned to her, and was met by warm lips pressing against his. “Good luck, Reza,” she said, then stepped back with the others.
It was time. Without hesitation, he stepped forward into the eerie wall of light.
***
The place, he knew well: the temple of the Desh-Ka, high upon the mountain of Kular-Arash. But it was not the ancient ruin where in his youth he had been transformed into something more than a man, where he had bound himself to a woman not of his race. No, the temple in which he now stood was new, immaculate, filled with the power of the great warriors who dwelled there. This was the prize of their warrior civilization in its youth, its full glory.
Standing in the sand of the great arena, the glare of the sun was shaded by the dome that would last for another hundred thousand years. Reza saw that he was not alone. Before him, standing like a pillar at the far side of the arena, was a lone male warrior.
“Tara-Khan,” Reza breathed. He did not need to see the symbols inscribed on the other warrior’s collar to know his name or who he was. He was known to all Kreela who had come after him, for he was the greatest of the warriors ever to have fought for Her honor, in all the days of the Empire. He had been Keel-Tath’s love, Her life. And here, in this place that was a dream that could yet draw blood, he was Her guardian, the last of the host She had taken with Her.
The warrior nodded. “Indeed,” he said in a voice of ages-long sadness, “it is so.”
Beyond Tara-Khan, Reza could see the dais at the head of the arena, where the world of the real and that of the spirit converged. And on it lay a figure in white. “The Empress,” he whispered, his heart falling away at the sight of Esah-Zhurah’s still body. She lay upon the dark marble altar at the center of the dais, draped in Her white robes, the thin gold collar gleaming from around Her neck. Reza could see the black mourning marks that ran from her eyes like rivers of sorrow against the snow white hair that lay in carefully coiled braids around her shoulders. Her breast rose and fell slowly, slowly, as her lungs labored on, and Her broken heart forced life through unwilling veins.
Turning back to Tara-Khan, he challenged, “And by what right do you stand before me?”
Tara-Khan’s eyes followed Reza’s to the still form of the vessel of Keel-Tath’s spirit. “I stand here as Her last guardian and protector, an instrument of Her will,” he said quietly. “This is my honor, Reza, to defend Her. The others are gone now. Only I remain.” He turned his eyes back to Reza. “Long have I slept beside Her spirit in the Darkness until this, the day of redemption, of the final combat. It is my honor to see that you are worthy.”
“And if you slay me this day,” Reza asked, “what is to become of Her?”
“The Empress shall perish,” Tara-Khan rasped miserably, “and with Her the Empire, our very souls cast into the pit of emptiness from which there shall be no escape for all eternity.” He smiled. “But do not fear, young one,” he said. “I have listened to your heart, your spirit; your love is true. But this, your final covenant with Her, must be made afresh in blood. This is as She long ago willed, and so shall it be.”
“Let me pass, Tara-Khan,” Reza implored him. “There has been enough death this day. Let me reach Her, that the lost may be saved, that the Empire shall not perish.”
Setting his hand upon the grip of his great sword, whose blade had slain countless foes in ages past, Tara-Khan replied, “Fated by Her own hand were you to be here this day, to fulfill the Prophecy. But beware: there are no guarantees. I can pass none until they are proven worthy, until they can best my sword.”
As the fire spread through his veins, his eyes taking in his dying Empress, his love, one last time, Reza hissed, “Then let it be done.”
And the thunder of clashing swords filled the arena.
***
Thorella cautiously made his way up the ramp into the Golden Pearl, his sidearm held at the ready, his finger tensed on the trigger. Behind him, Lieutenant Riggs’s Marines waited uncertainly in their defensive perimeter around the yacht, the roar of the command ship still loud in their ears as it reversed course, abandoning them in the huge hangar as it sought to avoid a possible ambush. None of them were thrilled with the idea of being stranded up here, still so far from even the closest regiment should they need help.
On his solitary reconnaissance, Thorella was completely uninterested in what his men thought. He was concerned only with what he found – or did not find – on the Golden Pearl. It did not take him long to find the bodies of the flight deck crew, holes drilled neatly through their chests by hand blasters. Even more cautious now, he went on to find the butchered remains of the ISS guards that he had left to take care of Mackenzie and Camden. Still, there was no sign of anyone who was still alive. Could Mackenzie and Camden have somehow taken over the ship and brought it here? Impossible, he thought to himself. But, still…
Slowly, sweat beading on his brow, he reentered the main corridor and began to make his way aft, toward sickbay and engineering.
“Sir,” Riggs reported excitedly from outside, “the patrol we sent up the main hall has detected a small group of the enemy not far from here.” To Riggs, the enemy was anyone who was not specifically designated as friendly.
“Details?” Thorella growled, annoyed that his concentration was being diverted from his search of the ship, but somehow relieved that someone had finally seen some activity from the Kreelans.
Riggs patched through the patrol leader. “It appears to be some kind of, I don’t know, a royal hall or something, sir,” reported the staff sergeant who was leading the patrol. “It’s huge, like nothing I’ve ever–”
“The enemy, sergeant,” Thorella snapped. “Tell me about the enemy!”
“Uh, yes, sir,” the woman replied. “Five individuals, sir. At the very top of a big, I don’t know, a pyramid, like.” Pause. “But I could swear that four of them look like our people.”
“What do you mean, ‘our people?’” Thorella demanded. Any thoughts of exploring the Golden Pearl further were rapidly fading.
“Humans, sir,” said the staff sergeant, reporting what she could make out through her image enhancers. “Two males and two females. One of the males is in Marine combat dress, one of the females in Navy uniform. The two others are in civvies of some kind. But the fifth one is definitely Kreelan, but she looks kind of small.”
“About the size of a human teenager?” Thorella asked, his face contorting into a rictus of ice-cold rage.
Pause. “Now that you mention it, yes, sir, that’s what she looks like. A young Kreelan–”
“Get them!” he choked.
“Sir?” Riggs cut in over the confused staff sergeant.
“You heard me!” Thorella raged as he w
hirled, running back down the corridor toward the hatchway. Now he knew what had happened to Borge: he had never made it off the doomed Warspite. “Get them! They’re renegades, they killed the president!” Thorella did not need a body for evidence. He knew for sure that Borge was dead. Precisely how he had gotten that way was of no further concern. All that mattered now was that his own ascension to power was finally cleared of the last obstacle, his despicable father. He just needed to be sure that Reza Gard and his accomplices were noted in the history books as President Borge’s murderers, and himself, the avenger. “And I want them alive!” He would not be denied the fulfillment of his long-lived vendetta.
Outside, Riggs felt his blood turn to ice. Such an outrage could not go unpunished. Two presidents, murdered? It was unthinkable. “Yes, sir! Sergeant Khosa,” he ordered, “open fire! Pin them down, but do not – repeat, do not – shoot to kill. We’re on our way.”
***
Nicole stood close behind Shera-Khan. Lightly, she put a hand on his shoulder. He did not flinch away. “Do you… feel anything, Shera-Khan?” she asked as they all stared into the light that swirled and writhed like a living thing.
He shook his head. “I am empty,” he said bleakly. “I cannot hear my father’s song; I cannot touch his soul.”
“How will we know if he’s successful,” Eustus asked, “or… if he fails?”
“If the Empress dies,” Shera-Khan said, “this–” he gestured toward the light, “–will be no more, and Darkness shall fall upon the sun. All shall end; there shall be no more.”
“Shera-Khan,” Braddock said quietly, “I’ve known your father for a long time, and I know how much he loves her, and I know how much you must love her. But, even if she dies, the universe will still go on. You’ll still be alive and well, and–”
“You do not understand,” Shera-Khan interrupted. “She is not an individual. She is all of us. Our souls and spirits are bound to Her. Even now, now that I cannot feel Her or any others of my kind, should She perish, I shall surely die also. With Her last breath, so shall the Empire perish from the Universe. My father bade me come with you should he fail; he did this out of kindness and hope. But should the Empress perish, so shall I; so shall all my kind.”
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