BloodWind

by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  "The way this thing moved through here, it was worse than an Ionarian firestorm!" Hesar reminded the Admiral. "We can't even begin to have time to vaccinate five or six hundred thousand men!"

  "We have to pray to the gods that it can't be passed on by casual contact, then," Kullen put in. "If it's just this gas that was shot through the ventilation system, we're doing okay. According to Dr. Burds, all the canisters on each station have been expended." He frowned. "But if it can pass from one man to another, I fear our world is doomed."

  BERYLA SAT on a lab stool and hung her head. "I can not believe they did this," she whispered.

  "Do we have to worry about it being spread from one man to another?" Kahn asked.

  "I don't think so, but I'm not sure," Beryla stated flatly. "Until I find that bitch's lab notes, I'll have no way of being sure."

  "Have they found Dr. Kym or Hael yet?" asked Amala Dayle.

  "No," Kahn answered. "But we will. And when we find them, I doubt they'll survive the trip to Rysalia Prime."

  "If they aren't already there," Bridget said softly. She had cried until her face was swollen. Her worry over Cree had turned her ashen and she shook as though she had the ague. When Kahn had come into the lab, he had tried to comfort her, but she had rebuffed him.

  "I am going after Cree," Kahn announced. "I want that vaccine brewed by the time I get back."

  "LeJong might have taken them with her or else destroyed them," Dorrie put in.

  "By the gods, woman, I don't want to hear that!" he thundered, glaring at her. He had slept with this woman many times— as had a lot of other men on FSK-14— but at that moment, he despised her.

  "I am sorry, Admiral," Dorrie replied, "but you have to consider it."

  "I don't have to consider squat!" He put a hand to his head and rubbed.

  "How is your headache?" Bridget inquired.

  "There," he snapped. He was more concerned with her pale face and trembling than with his own pain. He marched over to her and took her arm. "Come with me."

  Bridget tried to shrug off his hold. "Where are we going?"

  "Home for the moment," he growled, dragging her along in his wake.

  "I am not going— "

  Kahn didn't say another word. He merely stopped, hefted Bridget over his shoulder, and left the lab with her beating on his back with useless fists.

  "That man is falling in love," Tina remarked.

  "I've known that for the last five months," Beryla sighed. "I wish to God I hadn't let it happen."

  "How could you have prevented it?" Amala inquired. "Love comes of its own accord at times."

  "What will happen to us if only a hundred or so men are left on our world, Dr. Dean?" Ivonne asked, putting forth the one question that was uppermost in the minds of every woman in the room.

  "We can make do without them," said Dr. Burds.

  "Who will fight for us?" Ivonne pressed. "Take care of us?"

  "We can take care of ourselves," Dorrie spat. "We learned here today that we can fight."

  "But we need men!" Ivonne protested. "Defenseless women are targets for ruthless men!"

  "What we need," Beryla interrupted their argument, "is to find those damned lab books. Everything else can wait!"

  BRIDGET SLAPPED him as hard as she could, putting her full weight behind the hit. The blazing red imprint of her palm on his cheek when his head snapped to the side and the satisfying sound of flesh to flesh brought her out of her self-imposed inertia.

  "Don't you ever manhandle me like that again!" She slapped him again for good measure before going to a chair and slumping into it.

  Kahn fingered his stinging cheek and sighed. He no doubt deserved her anger for his highhanded manner, but he didn't deserve to have his jaw broken. He worked his aching chin from side to side, testing for breakage and winced at the pain still throbbing in his temple.

  "What will they do to him?" she asked.

  He didn't want to tell her that at that very moment, Cree was more than likely being tortured for the information locked inside his mind. He doubted very much that she could take such knowledge. So he lied. "There will be a trial, but they can't start that until the Chief of Fleet Operations arrives and, I'm sorry to say, that's now my new job title"

  "You said you were going after him," she accused.

  Kahn nodded. "As soon as Coure has The Sirocco on line. I'll be taking the Reapers with me. I'll insist Cree be brought back here for execution."

  Bridget's eyes flared but before she could speak, he put his hand on her knee. "Bridie," he said. "You have to understand. They will want to hang him."

  "No!" she shouted. "You can't let them!"

  "I am not going to let them," he said firmly. "I will bring him back. Don't worry about that."

  "You promise?"

  "I promise," he said and stood. He looked down at her for a moment then leaned over and placed a light kiss on her forehead. "You stay here. There are still pockets of Tribunal devotees running around lose. Taking Cree's woman would be a real coup for them." He turned to go.

  "Tylan?"

  Kahn looked around.

  "Be careful."

  He did not need to read her mind to know it wasn't his safety that concerned her, but Cree's.

  "YOU SHOULD not have promised her what you can not hope to deliver, Admiral," Symthian Kullen said as he joined Kahn in the corridor.

  "That nasty little habit of listening in on other people's conversation is very rude," Kahn snapped.

  Kullen snorted. "Even if Cree is still alive when we get there and he has survived the questioning, there won' t be anything left of the man she knew."

  "Shut up," the Admiral hissed.

  "It would be a blessing for them to end his life if they have downloaded his memory. I, for one, would rather see him hanged than spend the rest of his life as a mental cripple."

  "I said shut up!"

  Kullen's jaw tightened. "There are five Reapers waiting on board The Mistrial, Admiral," he said. "Six Reapers, seven Shepherds, and nineteen Keepers. Between us, we will get Kamerone Cree back, but at what price to the man?"

  Kahn thought of the six Shepherds left behind who were cleaning up the bodies on FSK-14. There should have been seven, but Lona was gone. Out of the twenty-one Keepers assigned to Reaper crews, two were also staying behind to protect the women in Dr. Kym's lab who were desperately looking for a vaccine. Forty-one men—

  "Forty-three," Kullen corrected, further annoying the Admiral.

  Aye, Kahn reasoned. With the Serenian and Necroman there were forty-three.

  The gods help us.

  "Amen to that," Kullen agreed.

  Chapter 24

  HE DWELT in darkness so complete, so cold, so silent, it was almost like already being dead. They had taken away the warmth; they had taken away the light; they had taken away the slightest sound, condemning him to utter silence. His body was one massive welt of pain; blood and body fluids oozed onto the cold stone floor so that he was forced to lay in the vile mess and shiver. The stench was unbearable and his fever had gone way beyond his ability to comprehend it. He wondered that he still drew breath.

  There was only one thing keeping him alive and he whispered her name: "Bridget..."

  Her precious name on his torn lips was a soothing balm. Her lovely face a beacon in the otherwise ebony darkness of his existence. Not even the intense hunger ravaging his insides could keep him from seeing that beloved face floating in the darkness before him. It staved off the thirst that was threatening to turn his flesh to cinders.

  The Hunger.

  Sweet Merciful Alel, the Hunger!

  It was feeding on him, eating him alive. The parasite striving to survive was cannibalizing Cree's body.

  Voices from far away drifted to him and he stopping dragging the gurgling breaths into his battered lungs. With the voices came the smell of fresh blood rushing through full, healthy veins. The smell was intoxicating and he licked his split lips like the starving man
he was. His nostrils flared as he sniffed.

  "No one is going to know. Open the gods-be-damned door!"

  "I'll give you two five minutes and not a minute more!"

  The door slid back into its wall niche and light from the corridor flowed dimly into Cree's cell. Konnor Rhye and Deon Inse moved past the guard and came to stand over the Reaper. "How are you feeling, Iceman?" Rhye sneered. "Up to another go `round with your good buddy?"

  "Don't underestimate a Reaper, Koni," the guard warned. "He hasn't fed since— "

  "Look at him!" Inse laughed. "Does he look like he's something even you would be afraid of, Hein?"

  The guard shrugged. "Do what you want; Lord Onar won't care. I can't stay to watch, as much as I'd like to." The guard left, leaving the door open behind him.

  Cree licked his lips again. The salty pulse of fluid that was Konnor Rhye's life essence was bombarding his senses and he was giddy with the smell of it. He heard the two human hearts beating: Rhye's a bit faster than Inse's; heard the blood swooshing through their veins. Rhye was saying something about Bridget, but Cree wasn't listening. He had tuned in on the tha-tump, tha-tump, tha-tump of Rhye's beating heart pushing rich red sustenance through miles of elastic veins.

  "Kahn will tire of her soon enough," Rhye was telling him. "Then I will bring her home where she should have been all along; where she would have been if it hadn't been for you!"

  The thirst was lurching like a drunken man up his parched throat. It begged to be sated and the scent drove the thirst wilder still. He felt his fangs pushing outward from his face; heard the furtive wet, sucking sounds they made as his nostrils widened and enlarged to draw in more of the aroma that threatened to drive him into a state of ecstasy. He moved his head deeper into the shadows so the men could not see the Transition beginning.

  "She'll forget all about you," Rhye snarled. "Once she's in my bed again, beneath me where she belongs, I'll make her forget you ever put your filthy, bestial hands on her."

  The Reaper flexed those bestial hands and was pleased to find the claws already extended. The talons were drawing inward as his fingers curled and he ticked the long, sharp points softly on the stone floor, one after the other as though drumming his fingers in boredom.

  "She loves me," Konnor stated. "I know she loves me. We were to be married until you took her from me."

  Inse drew back his boot and kicked Cree hard, delighted with the sound he thought to be a moan of pain. "Are you listening to him, Iceman?" The Reaper groaned with unholy delight as the heat began to glow in his demon eyes. Daring not open the lids lest the humans see the piercing red light that would shine like an inferno in this dark room, Cree kept his eyes shut, the better to expand his other senses. He braced his right heel against the floor and began to gather his strength. Saliva dripped in a long thin string down his leathery chin.

  "I asked to be there when they hang you," Rhye bragged. "I want to see what they do to you, you arrogant bastard. I want to be there when you start to choke."

  "I want to see him piss his pants. When that noose starts tightening around his neck, he's going to— "

  The thing came at Inse like a whirlwind out of the darkness; he never had a chance to cry out his surprise or horror. It flowed up and over him, driving him down to the stone floor with a speed that could not possibly have been of this world. It enveloped him in ape-like arms that crushed his lungs and burst organs.

  Konnor Rhye shrieked and jumped back as the Reaper sprang. There would be no help for Inse. Bolting for the corridor, Rhye began screaming for Hein, for anyone to help him. He slapped viciously at the door pad and then ran as fast as he could from the death screams of his friend, hoping the portal would lock before the creature could get out and come after him.

  The last thing Deon Inse saw before he died was the unbelievable width of the gaping jaw coming toward his face from behind double rows of razor-sharp teeth.

  The last thing Inse felt was the piercing agony that exploded in his throat as those steel-like jaws closed over his neck, severing his jugulars, ripping out chunks of flesh before it clamped down on his spine and crunched the fragile cartilage between its massive jaws.

  The last thing Inse ever heard was the slurping sounds the beast made as it fed.

  THEY HAD reached the outer hatchway of The Vortex. The new Chief of Space Fleet Operations looked at the black prison ship sitting in her docking harness alongside Feis Coure's ship, The Sirocco. He hated the sight of that massive long-range cruiser. She was ugly and she bore the unmistakable stamp of the Tribunal on her. Many men had died on that hell ship, but if he had anything to say about it, there would be no more torture and death inside her matte black hull. He meant to have her de-commissioned when this was all over.

  "That thing gives me the creeps," Kullen remarked.

  "Aye," Hesar agreed. "You and me both, Cap'n."

  "Can you fly a LRC, McGregor?" Kahn asked the young man who had appeared in the hatchway.

  "Aye," Raine McGregor admitted.

  Kullen looked past the young man to the dark hulk who stood behind the Serenian prince. He frowned, having a particular dislike for darklings, but he kept his mouth shut. If this man had had his life saved by Cree, there was something to be said for continuing to preserve that life, worthless as Kullen deemed it to be.

  Kahn studied the ship a minute then turned to Hesar. "Get Noll on the horn and tell him I want the bodies of our fighters brought out to the Vortex."

  "Why?" Kullen asked, tearing his attention from the dark man who was glaring back at him none-too kindly.

  "We were going to bury them in a mass grave on Rysalia Prime, but I think it might be best to take them to Haelstrom Point and send them into the Hole."

  "What the hell for?" Kullen demanded.

  Kahn looked at the ship. "We'll send her in with them. Set them both free of Tribunal evil."

  "I get your meaning," McGregor agreed. He looked over at the Vortex. "How many bodies are you taking about?"

  "About thirty," Hesar spoke for the Admiral. "We were lucky. Twenty-nine women and one man."

  "The lone male was one of Cree's," Kahn said. "One of his Shepherds."

  "Not the young one, I pray. Not the one called Lona," Lares Taborn spoke up.

  Kahn looked at the massive man. "I'm afraid so."

  "Bad," Lares pronounced. "Very bad." He had met the boy and liked him very much.

  "Take Thorne and Noll," Kahn told McGregor. "You shouldn't need any more crew than that should you?"

  Raine thought a moment. "For an LRC? I'll need three beside myself."

  Kahn nodded. He looked at Hesar. "Go with him, Teal." His attention shifted to the Necromanian giant.

  "I go where the son of the McGregor goes," Lares stated and headed with the young Serenian prince toward the black ship.

  Kullen rubbed his hands together. "Shall we go get our Prime Reaper, then, before he grows any taller?"

  The men were silent as they filed on board Symthian Kullen's ship. The other five Reapers: Coure and Kiel, who were twins; Tohre; Belial; and Gehdrin were already on board with their men. Kahn took his seat at the Captain's console and thought of the last words Dr. Dean had said to him before he left for the docking bays.

  "With over ninety-eight percent of the population being women now, there won't be a need for Retrieval Units."

  "Unless," she had answered quietly, "you go after men this time."

  Kahn shuddered. With three hundred thousand men dead on fifteen space stations, that left a little more than five hundred thousand on Rysalia Prime. With a ratio of 48 women to every man before this all began—

  He shuddered again. It was too terrifying to think about. Thank God the men of Rysalia Prime had been spared the evil that had been visited upon the men of the Frontier Stations.

  HAEL SEJM and Sada MacCorkingdale, one of her followers, did not speak as they walked along the Boulevard of Tears. Their faces were hidden within the deep cowls of their dark blue postulan
t's robes and they walked stooped, the better to hide their features. The leather sandals they wore made slapping sounds on the cobblestones as they made their way to the religious center of Tethys, The Mother.

  "Good morning, Daughters," they were greeted by the Guardess of the Gate, who manned the tall verdigris portal behind which lay the octagonal-shaped grounds of the center.

  Silently lifting one hand in greeting, Hael made good use of the rules of the Order, which forbade its members to speak until they were once more behind the twelve-foot high bronze perimeter of the compound.

  As the gate was unlocked for them to enter, Hael raised her head only high enough to allow her to get a glimpse of the center. A grim smile touched her pursed lips as she swept her eyes along the cluster of seven 600 foot tall black marble towers which circled the soaring majesty of the center's main building: the 1400 foot tall amethyst-sheathed obelisk called the Titaness.

  Hael's furtive gaze moved over the immaculately groomed grounds with their six oval fountains; the cobblestone courtyard which encircled the Reflecting Pool at the base of the Titaness. Her heart began to accelerate. She was with her own kind. Her sisters. The Daughters of the Multitude, at last! She and the other woman were safely within the protective arms of the Order and no man was allowed on these sacred grounds. A sigh of relief came from both women as they pushed back the hoods of their robes to reveal their faces.

  The Guardess of the Gate smiled at them as the massive portal closed and locked. "We have been expecting you, Sister," she said.

  THE BIOENGINEER breathed a sigh of relief. "Then it isn't contagious," she said.

  Beryla held up the test tube of pale blue liquid. She had cloned the original retrovirus and had then set to work on a vaccine. Working around the clock for the past thirteen hours, she believed she was only an hour or two away from success.

  "The only way the virus can be contracted is through breathing in the living bacterium," Beryla explained. "Once it's in the lungs, it attaches itself to the air sacs. It isn't expelled so it can't be passed from one person to another." She was exhausted and her voice hoarse. "Once the bacteria is inhaled, it starts to destroy the immune system at such a rapid pace, we could never administer an antigen fast enough to stop it."