Cyan lightning exploded from Sura-Ni’khan’s outstretched hands. Tesh-Dar fell to the ground, her skin tingling as if tiny insects were crawling all over her body. Even with her eyes closed and shielded by her arm, she was nearly blinded by the sun-bright bursts of energy that lanced out across the clearing. Through the deafening thunder, she could hear the squeals of terror as the attacking beasts were vaporized, and her nose filled with the stench of burned flesh and hide. She suddenly realized that this was no weapon fashioned by the hands of the armorers, but was among those special gifts Sura-Ni’khan had received when she became the last high priestess of the Desh-Ka.
The lightning storm raged for several minutes, for there were far more of the creatures than Tesh-Dar had suspected: it was not merely a pack, but a herd of predators that had swept through the area like a plague, converging in pursuit of the mammoth beast that Tesh-Dar had brought down.
She dared to look up in the silence that had suddenly descended, just in time to see Sura-Ni’khan slowly fall to her knees.
“My priestess!” Tesh-Dar exclaimed as she moved to Sura-Ni’khan’s side, holding her up with her good arm while ignoring the pain of her own injuries. The priestess’s skin was burning hot, and the metal of her armor even hotter. Tesh-Dar lay Sura-Ni’khan on her side and slashed the bindings of her armor, pulling the burning hot metal away from her, cringing as wisps of smoke rose from the black cloth garments beneath.
“My priestess,” Tesh-Dar repeated worriedly as she held one of Sura-Ni’khan’s hands with her own, “answer me!” Tesh-Dar looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps, and was relieved to see Kuirin-Shuril and the two other uninjured warriors, armed now with heavy energy weapons, running toward her.
Sura-Ni’khan’s eyes flickered open, and Tesh-Dar felt the priestess’s hand squeeze her own. “My time draws near, child,” Sura-Ni’khan whispered. “I had almost given up hope of finding a successor, for there could be no other but you. All this time I waited, and at last heard your blood sing with joy. The Empress sent me here to join you, to protect you, for you are my chosen one.” She paused for a moment, looking deeply into Tesh-Dar’s eyes. “It is time for you to choose, Tesh-Dar, while I yet have enough days to teach you before I join the Ancient Ones: would you accept the way of the Desh-Ka?”
Lowering her gaze, bowing her head, Tesh-Dar knew in her heart that she was ready. She had faced many challenges and stared Death in the face, yet this was the first time she had felt her soul finally break free of its bonds of guilt and shame. Her heart and spirit were whole again. “I accept, my priestess,” she said quietly.
As the words escaped her lips, she and the others vanished from the planet, brought home by the will of the Empress.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Despite his best efforts, it had taken three precious days for Sikorsky to set up a meeting with his contact from the train dispatch center, Pyotr Medvedev. After a great deal of wrangling, Sikorsky and Valentina — Scarlet — had agreed to meet him at an underground dance bar in a run-down industrial district of Saint Petersburg City. Accessible through a battered metal door in an equally battered warehouse, it had no sign out front, no parking, no indication of what it was other than the people who trickled in and out. Even in a police state, there were places such as this that were officially outlawed, but unofficially sanctioned. Frequented by dissidents and Party members, men and women, young and old, it was a social relief valve that also served as a venue where needs of every description were satisfied and deals were made. The undergrounds offered a modest amount of protection from the secret police, for the children of senior Party officials were often to be found at such places late at night, and their arrest could prove awkward.
In a back corner booth, vibrating with the deafening beat of the music to which hundreds of young men and women gyrated on the dance floor, they sat with Medvedev. They had tried asking him questions, at first indirect, and then very direct, shouting to be heard above the roaring music.
He had simply waved aside their questions, shouting back that they had plenty of time for business. “Pleasure comes first,” he yelled over the music, his eyes firmly fixed on Valentina. Taller than Sikorsky, Medvedev also boasted a lean, muscular body. With slicked-back black hair and deep blue eyes, he would have been considered handsome were it not for the constantly calculating expression he wore. While his official job was as a lowly train dispatcher, his true vocation was making deals in the underground. And dominating women. He considered himself a gift to the opposite sex, and it was clear from the look on his face that he believed that his next conquest was sitting before him: Valentina.
Sikorsky was across the table from Medvedev, knowing quite well what the man was thinking. While he was useful in his own business dealings, Sikorsky had always hated having to deal with him: he was scum. He would make a deal with anyone for anything if it served his purposes. He was also known to be more than a so-called lady’s man: he was a beast with a reputation for violence. Sikorsky knew that he himself was no angel, but at heart he was an honest and scrupulous man, and those like Medvedev sickened him. He had told all of this to Valentina, and hoped that she really understood what she was getting herself into by using her body as the currency for this transaction.
Valentina, he thought, inwardly shaking his head, you have no idea what this man is capable of. Yet he knew that he was probably underestimating her. He had been shocked at the transformation she had undergone with the aid of some of the clothes and makeup she had brought in the traveling case with her, from wherever she had really come from. Gone was the inconspicuous mouse of a woman who could be mistaken for a thousand others and easily disappear into a crowd. Instead, when she reappeared from the rest room at the back of the restaurant where they had waited until meeting Medvedev, Sikorsky found himself looking at a gorgeous brunette wearing a black leather outfit that looked like it was painted on, hugging her generous curves, with the blouse exposing a generous amount of cleavage.
Clicking across the floor in stiletto heels, he didn’t even recognize her until she came right up to him and asked with a wry smile, “What do you think?”
Red-faced with embarrassment, for he had been staring at her open-mouthed, he looked away and muttered, “I think that will work.”
Now, sitting between them, he could feel an emotional current running between the two that made him increasingly uncomfortable. He watched as Medvedev stared at Valentina, and wondered who was truly baiting whom as she stared back, shifting in her seat to give him a slightly better look down her blouse. A clear and dangerous invitation.
Sikorsky was just about to get up and announce they were leaving when Valentina suddenly leaned over to Medvedev and shouted something in his ear. Then she got up and disappeared into the writhing mass of people on the dance floor, her hips swaying suggestively.
After a few seconds of staring after her, completely ignoring Sikorsky, Medvedev got up from the booth and followed in her wake.
* * *
The women’s bathroom was about what Valentina had expected: large, ridiculously upscale, as if it were in a luxury hotel, loud — although not nearly as loud as the dance floor — and crowded. While most of the occupants were women, there were plenty of men, too, engaged in everything from polite discussion with their partners, wine glasses in hand, to unabashed sex.
Her most pressing concern was privacy: she could not do what she needed to do out in the open. Several people looked up as she walked in, with a few giving her more than a casual glance. She strutted over to the row of stalls, prepared to yank one of the other women out if she had to. Fortunately, a woman made her exit from the stall at the end, dragging another woman, only half-dressed, behind her, and Valentina moved quickly to take it. She waited, holding the door open until Medvedev walked into the bathroom. Seeing her instantly, he sauntered over, a broad smile on his face.
Without a word, he came into the oversize stall with her, and she closed the door behind him.
After that, things did not go quite as Medvedev probably had expected. When he reached for her, a leering grin on his face, she leaned forward as if she were going to kiss him before viciously slamming a knee into his bulging crotch. As he doubled over, gagging, she slapped a syrette against his neck, then slammed him against the back wall. He slumped down onto the toilet, still gasping for breath as the drugs rushed through his system, carried by his carotid artery. She held his head down between his knees, effectively immobilizing him until he stopped struggling. A moment more and his body clearly relaxed, fully under the influence of the drugs she had given him.
“Now, my friend,” she said in a conversational voice that he would be able to hear, but that would not carry beyond the stall over the background of music and the other goings-on in the bathroom, “we’re going to play a little game. I’m going to ask you questions, and you’re going to give me answers.”
“Sure,” he said groggily as she lifted his head up and shoved his body against the wall again. The syrette she had injected him with contained a powerful cocktail of muscle relaxants and a psychological uninhibitor that would loosen his tongue about anything he knew.
“Pyotr,” she asked him, “where do the special trains, the ones from the big coal-fired power plants, go? What are they carrying?”
“Why do you want to talk about that when you could be—” He tried to clumsily grab for her again.
“Where do the special trains go?” she hissed, grabbing one of his hands and twisting it back in an extremely painful grip.
Medvedev opened his mouth to shriek, but she silenced him with a blow from her free arm, hitting him in the jaw with her elbow. One of the side effects of the drugs she had given him was that they amplified the sensation of pain, and between the wrist lock and the blow to his jaw, he was shivering in agony.
“Tell me what I want to know, and quietly,” she said in his ear, “and I’ll make the pain stop.”
He nodded quickly, desperate for her to make the pain go away. “They just carry waste from the plants, that’s all I know,” he rasped. “There is a place, a disposal facility, thirty kilometers due north of here. All the special trains go there.”
“There’s nothing north of the city but forest, Pyotr,” she told him, twisting his wrist a bit more. The ship that had dropped her off had also carried a full reconnaissance package. The makeup compact in her tiny purse was in actuality a microcomputer that contained, among other things, a complete download of all the information the ship had recorded, and she had studied it intently before she had landed, and studied it more in the two evenings she had stayed with Sikorsky and his wife. There was nothing north of Saint Petersburg but an endless stretch of forest. Yet it was possible she missed something.
“No, wait!” he said, panting. “The facility is not easy to find. There is no need for people to go there. But it is there. There is a track that leads north from the main ring around the city, near the Chornaya Rechka station. Dmitri will know where it is; he helped to build the station. There is a track from the north that isn’t marked, that goes to the main space port. The special trains from the coal plants all take that northern spur. It will take you to the facility.”
As Medvedev talked, she took out her makeup case with her free hand and activated the computer it contained. It projected a ghostly overhead image of Saint Petersburg City on the wall, and with a few whispered words the tiny but intelligent computer displayed what she wanted.
“There!” Medvedev panted, pointing at a rail line that went north from the main ring, just as he had said. “That is the one!”
“It only goes a few kilometers north and then ends, Pyotr,” she said, her voice holding an edge that made him cringe. The image on the wall showed a rail line that could easily hold a large mag-lev train, but after a short run northward it simply ended in the trees.
“It must be camouflaged,” he pleaded. “I know it goes north to the facility. It is a priority line, and we control the switches at the facility. It is there, I tell you!”
Quickly zooming out to show a larger view of the area, the computer projected where the facility might be and then began a rapid search to find it. In under a minute she found what she was looking for.
“Chyort voz’mi,” she cursed quietly. “Damn it.” Deep in the forest was a set of drab buildings behind a tall concrete wall topped by several guard towers. There were military vehicles, including heavy tanks, inside the compound, with a large landing area for vertical take-off aircraft. And at the base of the mountain against which the compound was sited, a massive concrete apron, carefully painted to make it look like a large forest meadow, lined with cargo vehicles led into a cavernous tunnel that disappeared into the mountain. She had recognized it during her earlier studying of the area as a military facility, of course, but had never suspected that this would be what she was looking for.
The facility was indeed there, and it was underground.
“How do I get in, Pyotr?” she asked him, twisting his wrist again as she slipped the makeup compact back into her purse with her other hand.
“I don’t know, I swear!” he whimpered. “It doesn’t matter, anyway.”
The way he said the last words sent a chill through her. “What do you mean?”
“The secret police are coming for you.” He looked up at her, tears in his eyes, “I just wanted to fuck you before they took you away. Such a waste,” he sobbed, shaking his head. The drugs were running their full course in his system now. “I tell them things I hear, things they want to know, and they leave me alone. Dmitri told me that he was very interested in the train schedules from the big coal power plants. Not to the plants, but from the plants. I thought that was interesting, and so did the secret police.”
“Is that why you took so long setting up this meeting?” she asked him quickly. “You were waiting for the secret police?”
“Yes,” he nodded. “They said they needed some time to arrange things, and that I was to meet you here tonight and have a good time with you. Past that, they did not tell me, and I didn’t care. Oh, come here, dorogaya, while we still have time!” He suddenly reached for her with his free hand, groping at her breasts.
She was out of time, and so was Medvedev. Letting go of his hand, she put one of her hands on the back of his head and locked the other around his jaw, then gave his head a sharp, vicious twist. His neck broke with a wet snap and his body went limp. She carefully propped him up against the wall to make it appear as if he had passed out from too much of a good time. As crowded as this place was, he wouldn’t go undiscovered for long, but comatose bodies were commonplace here, and few who weren’t comatose were in full control of their faculties. No one would realize that he was dead before she and Dmitri got away.
Her only worry now was how to escape this place without being taken by the secret police.
* * *
Dmitri was growing increasingly worried. Valentina and Medvedev had been gone what seemed like hours, but he knew from the frequent glances at his watch had only been minutes. He hated this place, and couldn’t understand how anyone could find enjoyment here: music so loud that he couldn’t hear himself scream, women and men propositioning each other shamelessly. He had gotten half a dozen invitations from both men and women in the few minutes that Valentina had been gone, and he had done his best to not act offended: he already felt completely out of place here, and didn’t want to call any more attention to himself than was absolutely necessary. He nursed his drink, trying to give the impression of drinking a lot more than he actually was. And most of all, he forced himself to ignore the overpowering urge to follow after Valentina and find out what was happening. On that, however, she had given him very explicit instructions when they took this booth.
“No matter what happens, Dmitri,” she had told him earlier, “do not follow me if I get up to leave and Medvedev follows after me.”
“Why not?” he had asked.
She had given him a searchi
ng look. “You don’t want to know,” she had finally said.
He was holding his hands under the table to keep everyone from seeing how he was clenching and unclenching them, a nervous habit since childhood. If she is not back in another two minutes, he told himself, I am going after her.
A moment later, he saw her emerge from the solid wall of gyrating bodies on the dance floor, heading toward him. Medvedev was nowhere to be seen. She nodded her head in the general direction of the door. It was time to go.
Sikorsky breathed a sigh of relief and tossed back the rest of his vodka. As he stood up, the music suddenly stopped. The crowd instantly howled and jeered, but their voices went silent as the dance lighting, lasers and holographic displays, mostly of nude men and women engaged in lewd acts, disappeared. The entire club was cast into pitch darkness for a moment, which was replaced by the harsh glare of white lights that went on all around the perimeter of the ceiling. If anything, the stark illumination of the club’s interior was even more surreal than the light show, exposing the details of the sound and lighting systems, not to mention the deteriorating concrete walls and corroded sheet metal ceiling high above the hushed crowd.
He felt Valentina’s hand clamp on his arm.
“This way,” she whispered urgently. “Now.”
“Secret police!” someone suddenly yelled. The effect would have been exactly the same if there had been a fire. The crowd instantly panicked, with nearly five hundred people surging for the single entrance. While there were other doors in the warehouse, most of those now trapped inside didn’t know about them, nor did they have the keys to the locks.
Sikorsky fought to follow Valentina through the tide of people stampeding to get out. “We are going the wrong way!” he shouted over the din of screaming voices around them. “The door is back there!”
In Her Name: The Last War Page 59