Braddock and Enya still did not understand, but Nicole did, and she drew Shera-Khan closer to her. “He will win the Challenge,” she said, a tingling sensation running through her chest at the words. “He must.”
“Hey,” Eustus said from behind them. Unable to watch the eye-searing light anymore, he had turned to study the rest of the throne room. Now, as he watched Riggs’s Marines darting in through the entrance they themselves had used, advancing on the great stairway, he almost wished he hadn’t. “I think we’ve got company.”
“Who–”
“Down!” Eustus cried, throwing the others to the floor of the dais just as a hail of energy bolts blasted chunks from the stairway below and ricocheted from the crystalline dome above.
***
Reza hissed as Tara-Khan’s sword slashed through his armor, drawing blood from his shoulder.
“Well do you fight, young one,” Tara-Khan told him through gritted teeth, for Reza’s sword had found its mark on occasion also, “but still do you have much to learn.”
For what seemed like hours the two had fought, caught in a cycle of desperate attrition, one to save the future, the other to slaughter imperfection, unworthiness. Both were perfect in their craft, unable to inflict a decisive blow, only able to harm. To hurt, to bleed.
“I have learned much already,” Reza hissed. His sword swung through space with a power and speed that left thunder in the air as the great blade sought Tara-Khan’s neck. It was perfectly timed, the razor’s edge keening as it sought the older warrior’s flesh.
Instead, it found only falling water.
“What?” Reza stammered in confusion. Tara-Khan had disappeared. Only a pool of water, rapidly sinking into the sand, was left where he had been standing. Warily, he stepped closer, prodding the wet sand with his foot.
A flutter caught his eye. The Empress, he thought. She moved! But as he studied Her, he knew it must have been an illusion. She was still as the stone upon which She lay. If he did not save Her soon, that was how She would forever remain. Pushing Tara-Khan from his mind, he took a step toward Her. Every second he waited was a grain of sand slipping through the waist of a cosmic hourglass. And so few grains were left, he thought. So very few.
Another step.
Where was Tara-Khan? He whirled about suddenly, his sword cutting a protective arc, but Tara-Khan was nowhere to be seen. There was only the cryptic stain upon the sand, quickly fading. Surely, he thought, Tara-Khan had not conceded, not in silence, without a word?
He took another step toward Esah-Zhurah, the Empress. And another. Closer to Her now, he could hear the slow, shallow rustle of Her breathing, could smell Her hair, and his insides began to tremble. The trickle of warm blood that ran down his side from his shoulder felt like a caress, as when her hand had touched him lovingly, when he had held her close. So long ago, he thought. So very, very long ago.
He was close to Her now, his sword ready at his side, but his eyes were filled with the image of Her face. She had become his world, the very Universe. The song that had turned his blood to fire sang still, not for battle, but for love, for Her.
At the dais, now. Climbing the steps. The sound of his feet through water. Her face, turned toward him–
Water?
– as if watching him, Her eyes closed…
He did not see the water stir as he passed, heard nothing as it rose and took shape and form, silent as a still pool as metal, flesh, and bone emerged.
His inner alarms clamored and his body reacted with the strength of a tiger and the speed of lightning, but it was too little, too late. With a triumphant roar, Tara-Khan attacked. The great blade speared through the side of Reza’s armor, embedding itself deep within him in a searing flash of pain.
In agonized rage, Reza swung his own weapon at Tara-Khan’s unprotected head, but again it found nothing but water.
I have failed, he thought miserably, as Tara-Khan rose again, his sword ready to strike.
“You fought well young one,” the elder warrior said, “but you are not The One. You are not worthy of Her love, and thus shall you perish.” The sword fell.
Water, the thought flashed through Reza’s mind as the blade hissed through the air. Water… and ice…
At the last instant, Reza threw himself forward, sinking his claws into Tara-Khan’s armor as the sword whistled past above his head. Laughing at Reza’s desperate attempt to save himself, Tara-Khan did as Reza had hoped. His body melted into water, his essence slipping through Reza’s fingers.
But they were no longer in the arena.
***
“Look out!” Enya cried, as an energy bolt sheared an elephant-sized chunk of the great glassine dome from the slender frame above.
With a jerk of his head, Braddock saw the huge glass fragment falling toward him. Twisting desperately to the side, he tried to get out of its way, but he was too late. With a crash that shook the dais itself, Braddock disappeared beneath the mass of crystal as it exploded into a million tiny shards.
“Tony!” Nicole screamed as she crawled through the debris toward him, the crystal fragments lacerating her hands and knees. She reached out to take hold of the glass shell that covered Braddock’s body like the transparent lid of a coffin.
“No!” Shera-Khan cried, batting her unprotected hands away from the razor sharp edges. “Let me.” Sensing a lull in the firing from below and using his armored hands and diamond-hard talons, he struggled to lift a fragment of the crystal that covered Braddock’s body, but was unable to move it. It was far too large, too heavy.
Nicole slid up next to him, keeping her head down and out of the line of fire. Above them, the dome began to disintegrate, huge chunks falling into the throne room as the structure began to lose the last of its integrity.
“Tony,” she whispered, peering at his smashed body through the clear crystal. His face, his coat, his hands were covered with blood. Blood was everywhere. “No,” she moaned. “Please, Tony,” she whispered, “You cannot die!” But she had seen death enough times to recognize it. And Tony Braddock was dead.
As Shera-Khan watched helplessly, Nicole laid her head on the crystal that covered her husband and began to silently weep.
On the other side of the dais, separated by the circle of blue light from the others, Enya and Eustus continued to fire at their attackers, trying to keep them pinned down.
“There are too many of them!” Enya shouted above the thunder of the guns.
“You have a talent for understatement, my love,” he replied as he sent a round into a careless Marine’s leg. He was trying desperately not to kill any of them, only to injure them or keep their heads down. The ISS guards were one thing; they were as much an enemy as the Kreelans had ever been. But the Marines were his people, his family. “Nicole,” he bellowed, “how are you doing?”
Only the guns below answered him.
“Nicole?” he called again. They had been able to hear each other before. “What the hell are they doing over there?” he asked Enya as he turned, ready to skirt around toward the other side, where the other three of their little band had posted themselves.
The ugly snout of a blaster suddenly thrust itself into his face.
“Drop it,” a voice growled from behind a combat helmet. Eustus saw that where the nameplate had been on the man’s armor, there was nothing now but a still-hot scorch mark. “Both of you. Now.”
Hesitating for just a moment, Eustus did as he was told. They had lost.
Behind him, Enya asked quietly, “Eustus?” She still held her weapon, clenched in her left hand.
“Drop it,” Eustus told her. He heard the weapon clatter onto the cold stone floor.
“Where are the others?” Eustus asked.
“Shut up,” the Marine snarled as three more armored figures appeared from the other side to surround them. The Marine motioned with his blaster toward where he had left Nicole, Braddock, and Shera-Khan. “Move it. Now.”
Eustus led Enya around the cy
lindrical wall of light, ignoring the vicious shove the Marine gave him as he passed. As he walked, he heard something crunching under his feet, like glass. And then he saw Nicole slumped over a huge mass of crystal, Shera-Khan on his knees beside her, a Marine covering them with his rifle. A pool of blood seeped from beneath the crystal.
“Sweet Jesus,” he whispered. “Nicole, what hap–”
A huge Marine slammed an elbow into Eustus’s jaw, sending him sprawling dangerously close to the light. Through the stars dancing through his brain, he smelled hair burning, and a prickling sensation told him that it was the hair on his arm, being burned into plasma by whatever energy governed the barrier.
“Eustus!” Enya cried as she grabbed at his ankles, pulling him away from the shimmering wall. “You could have killed him!” she snarled at the figure looming behind her.
“He’s a traitor,” Lieutenant Riggs sneered over the suit’s PA system, “just like you. I don’t know why General Thorella wants you alive, but he does.” He grimaced at all of them, a look of utter disgust diluted only with hatred, not caring that they could not see his expression behind his helmet. “And I follow orders.” A booted foot kicked at Braddock’s crystal sarcophagus.
“You bastard!” Nicole shrieked, leaping to her feet, her blood suddenly blazing with a fiery alien rage.
Shera-Khan watched in amazement as this human woman, this friend-warrior of his father, struck out at the animal in armor. She moved as if she had talons, with the deadly grace and speed of a warrior priestess.
Riggs was caught off-guard, and his head rang against the inside of his helmet as her hands slammed against his armor with a strength he never would have guessed at by looking at her. But sheer mass, if nothing else, was on his side, and he recovered quickly. As one armored fist fastened itself around one of Nicole’s wrists, the other rose to smash her in the face.
In that instant, Shera-Khan sensed a tremor pulse through his body, and he knew that if he did not act, Nicole would be dead.
Like a tiger he leaped, his arms outstretched, his claws reaching not for Riggs, but for Nicole.
***
Reza fell to his knees upon the ice, his face already a cherry red from the freezing wind that howled over the great glacier at the south pole of the Homeworld, a place so cold that spit froze solid before it hit the ground.
Forcing his eyes open against the frigid wind, he saw Tara-Khan’s face, frozen in a nightmare state that was half flesh, half ice. One eye was still fully formed, staring at him in astonishment, while the other was stretched, elongated like a broken yolk as it had begun to flow toward the ground. The mouth, misshapen, skewed, was open, but what emotion might have been conveyed there was unimaginable, horrible. His arms and sword had liquefied, falling to fuse with what was left of his legs, now mannequin-like sculptures in ice that had become one with the glacier.
And Reza’s hands, which had been holding onto his opponent’s armored chest, were now locked in an icy grip, fused inside Tara-Khan’s partly-solidified torso, water and ice, flesh and blood.
With a cry of desperation, Reza broke his hands free, falling backward onto the ice, Tara-Khan’s cooling blood-water on his hands. Struggling against the gale and his own rapidly ebbing strength, he stood up, facing what remained of Tara-Khan.
“May you find peace in Her name,” he said to the nightmare face. Then, with his hands clasped together, he smashed the frozen warrior’s head from his shoulders, sending frozen bits of ice and flesh across the plain of white.
He turned toward the sky, toward the Empress moon, which hung low on the horizon. Running out of time, he thought, his vision starting to turn gray from the blood that poured from the gaping wound in his side, his limbs numb from the cold. As his breath froze into crystals around his mouth, disturbed only by the small trickle of blood he had coughed up from his punctured lung, he closed his eyes, picturing the dying Empress in his mind.
After a time that was not time, he opened his eyes. The arena was dark around him, the walls hidden in shadow. Even the sky through the dome above was darkened, invisible to his failing vision. Only around the Empress was there a halo, an aura, of gently pulsating cyan light that faded as he watched, its power failing with Her will to survive.
Willing his dying body to move, he struggled toward her, his sandals dragging his frostbitten feet through the sand. He stumbled, fell against the stone of the dais, then dragged himself forward, up the steps on his hands and elbows, fighting pain, fighting time, fighting a cursed fate.
He made it to the top, facing the stone slab on which She lay. Around him now was darkness, as if the world itself was shrinking down upon Her, and even She was falling into shadow as the light around Her pulsed, faded.
“No,” he moaned, forcing himself to his knees, crawling to Her side, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. Shaking off his gauntlets, he reached forward with trembling hands to touch Her, felt the coolness of Her skin, the silence of the spirit that cried for release from its pain. “I am here,” he told her as he willed her to wake, to rise. “Please, my Empress, you must not die.”
Then it was that he saw something clutched in her left hand, something about the size of his fist, and now black as coal. The crystal heart.
Not really knowing why, following an instinct that had been planted long ago in a race that was not his own by birth, he pried the scorched crystal from her hand, noting the scar on her palm that matched his own.
Drawing the dagger of the Empress, the one that Esah-Zhurah had given him so long ago, he joined his hand to hers, the cold metal between them. Once before had he done this with the woman who owned his heart; now he would do it with the woman who owned his spirit, and the spirit of his adopted people.
“With my last breath,” he whispered to her, “do I give thee life, my Empress.” He pulled the knife between them, feeling the pitiable trickle of warmth that welled from his numbed hand, then closed his bleeding palm over hers.
As the world faded toward darkness, he gently kissed her lips. The tingle of memory, of what once had been, surged through his mind as he touched her. Closing his eyes, he laid his head upon her breast. He rested next to her on the cold stone slab, his life rapidly draining away into the empty shadows where once the dais had been, where now the Darkness of Forever reigned.
“I love you,” he whispered. The last of his strength did he give that his hand could hold hers. He hoped that the tiny spark of life that remained in his body would be enough to rekindle Her own.
His heart beat slower, ever slower. And then it was still.
He did not feel the quickening of Her breath, or the sudden warmth of Her breast beneath his gray, frozen cheek. He did not see as once again the crystal heart began to glow beneath the blood, his own, that coated it and had penetrated it as had Keel-Tath’s millennia ago.
Beside him, the Empress awoke.
***
The Marine who had been guarding Shera-Khan spun around as the boy lunged toward Riggs, the projected sight reticle in the Marine’s helmet tracking the boy with smooth precision. The Marine’s finger tensed on the big weapon’s trigger just as a jagged bolt of lightning streaked from the maelstrom that was the center of the dais, incinerating him with more heat than could be found on the surface of a star.
Shera-Khan slammed into Nicole, knocking her from Riggs’s grasp just as the world exploded around them. The big Marine, caught off guard by the boy’s attack and the blinding bolt of lightning, stumbled backward and fell off the dais just as another bolt crackled through the air where he had just been standing.
“What the hell?” Riggs cried as he went over the edge, landing hard on his back and then scrabbling madly to keep from rolling down the hundreds of steps that lay below. He saw as in a nightmare that the barrier had dissolved into a hydra of lightning that snapped and bit at the air over the great dais, its energy prickling his skin. He watched, dumbfounded, as the seething monster struck again, a blinding tentacle lashing out at anothe
r of his Marines. A flash and a roar crashed through Riggs’s brain, loud enough to deafen him even with the suit’s passive aural dampers. Blinking away the spots that peppered his vision, he saw nothing left of the Marine but a scorch mark on the stone.
“What’s going on in there?” Riggs heard Thorella’s voice through the pandemonium around him, his voice barely audible over the boosted voice link.
“I don’t know, sir,” the young lieutenant shouted back in a panic, rolling down another step as the deadly storm that turned and wheeled above him struck down yet another of his people, and then another. “We’re getting killed up here!”
“Goddammit!” Thorella screamed into the radio from where he stood far below, at the entrance to the throne room. Looking up, he saw what looked like a lightning-whipped tornado whirling around the apex of the enormous pyramid of stairs, blinding flashes of light reflecting from the surrounding dome like a gigantic strobe. “Give me a proper report, lieutenant!” he shouted again. “What is happening? What do you see?”
Hauling himself up on his elbows, Riggs peered over the last step, his eyes coming just above the stone floor of the dais. “Jesus,” he whispered to himself as he saw what awaited him. There, at the very center of the dais, stood a Kreelan woman clothed only in simple white robes. Her hands were lifted above her, and Riggs’s eyes widened as he saw the lightning dancing from her palms, enveloping her in a swirling aura that was so bright that it hurt his eyes to look directly at her.
She looks like an angel, he thought to himself before the woman turned her burning eyes upon him. An angel, a hysterical voice in his mind echoed as he lost control of his bladder, a blade of fear cutting through his stomach. An angel of death.
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