by R. M. Meluch
A dozen crewmen, seeking the shade of the forest, ambled very near to the boulder where Alihahd hid. From the emotions that played across Alihahd’s face as he viewed them, his three companions guessed the worst. But Alihahd exhaled heavily and stood. “Rebels. Those are mine.”
He gave Hall his taeben and he walked slowly and loudly into the open, his hands wide and empty.
Twelve guns turned and aimed.
Alihahd’s rebels had always been quick to draw their guns. Alihahd never let them use them.
“Put those down,” bellowed the strangely dressed, white-skinned, blond man come limping from the forest.
The rebels jumped, stuttered, and stared. They knew the voice. The command was a ghost from the past. What they saw needed reconciling. The Alihahd they remembered was swarthy.
Still they knew him when he spoke again. “It is I.”
At once the guns were put up, except for two of the most stunned, who were nudged by their comrades and hastily followed suit.
The thick silence broke. “Alihahd!” someone cried at last.
Exultant and dazed smiles flashed, and one crewman dashed to the ships, yelling, “Alihahd! Alihahd!” And all the rebels gathered around to see.
It was an awkward reunion, with enough excitement, some tears, but no embraces or backslapping, and the welcomes were clumsily expressed.
Then the throng parted for the approach of a stocky woman in Na′id commodore uniform. Blue tribal tattoos around her lips broadened as she smiled, but with no more surprise or jubilation than on recovering a lost nose ring. So there you are, said the smile.
The commodore, Musa, took off her broad-brimmed hat, put it on Alihahd’s fair head, and said, “What happened to you?” She meant his color, not his disappearance.
“As you see,” Alihahd said.
Musa pressed her stout forefinger experimentally to his white cheek. “Is this real?”
Alihahd spoke tautly. “Do you honestly suppose anyone would look like this on purpose?”
“I guess not,” Musa said. “Not unless you’re trying to be the reincarnation of Shad Iliya.”
Alihahd’s smile was very thin.
A few grins around him slackened. A fierce, blue-eyed glare from Alihahd silenced any comment.
“You really do have that look,” Musa said.
Alihahd told her, “You are aware that there are Na′id on this planet.”
“Can’t be,” Musa said. A whispering wave of consternation passed through the rebel troops.
A strong voice from the woods said, “Are.”
That was Hall. And all the rebel guns raised and pointed at him.
“Are,” Alihahd said, pushing down the nearest weapon. “But that is not one. Put those things away before you shoot each other.”
And when all the weapons were holstered, Hall, Layla, and Vaslav came out of hiding.
Alihahd muttered aside to Musa while the rebels were distracted by the appearance of his companions, “Not battle-ready, Musa. Your ships should be arranged at dome points.”
“I didn’t think it necessary in uncharted space,” Musa said.
“You were followed.”
Musa’s broad brow creased. “Why would the Na′id follow us? As far as they know, we’re a loyal squadron.”
“Evidently, you have been discovered. It appears they are tracking you to all your contacts and bases before they make their final strike.”
Musa pouted, assessing the dimensions of the disaster. “Shall we make a run for it?”
Alihahd looked up at the sky. There was nothing in it for the moment. “We have to assume they know where we are.”
Musa nodded. “How did you know where we were?”
“A bird told me.”
Musa knew better than to question Alihahd when he was being evasive. She addressed the crisis at hand. “We’re sitting ducks down here.”
“We are worse if we take off,” Alihahd said. Four ships slugging out of a thick atmosphere made a slow, concentrated target. On the ground, even if the Na′id located the ships, they couldn’t be certain of where all the people were.
“I would feel much better in a spaceship,” Musa said.
“So would most Na′id. I would not,” Alihahd said. Harrison Hall came to his side.
“But you’re a brilliant spaceship strategist,” Musa said.
“I am merely competent in the air,” Alihahd said. “I am brilliant on the ground.” He glanced to Hall. “I don’t lose.”
Musa turned with a shrug, clapped her hands, and shouted a command: “Ships on dome points! Now!”
The rebels hurried to obey, and they arranged the ships at optimum angles for their combined force fields to raise a nearly impenetrable energy-shield dome.
“What have you on the scanners, Musa?” Alihahd asked while it was done.
“No ships.” Musa opened her thick arms in bafflement. “You say there are Na′id. I don’t know where they are.”
“It is a metallic planet,” Alihahd said.
Musa agreed. “They could hide anything here.”
The engines of the repositioned ships were winding down. They were ready to raise the shield dome on Alihahd’s command.
Alihahd held his breath. He was inviting direct confrontation if he raised a defensive dome now. If the Na′id were monitoring, they would see the dome on their scanners and would know they’d been detected. “Raise it,” Alihahd said and waited for the repercussions. “Is there wine to be had?” he asked Musa.
“Y—”
“No,” Hall said.
Musa looked quizzically to Alihahd.
“Never mind,” Alihahd said.
Someone gestured skyward and sang out, “Here they come.”
All eyes turned up.
Alihahd watched with sinking soul. Twelve ships appeared, not battleships of a space fleet, but troop transports of an army bearing twelve thousand infantry soldiers. The ominous silhouettes of the delta-wing ships flew in the formation of three broken echelons matted against the twilight sky. It was a known pattern, the personal signature of a special army.
Alihahd breathed, “This goes beyond chance and coincidence. This is destiny.” There is a God and He is vengeful.
It was the 27th Army. The victors of Jerusalem.
Alihahd motioned aside to Vaslav without looking at him. “Vaslav, man a transceiver.”
The boy ran to the flagship as the delta-wing transports of the infamous 27th Army were touching down. They came to rest on the burn-cleared plateau a scant kilometer from the rebel camp and set up on defensive points so that their own energy dome nearly overlapped the rebels’. Then uniformed soldiers poured out of the dreadful ships like bottle-blue ants.
“Hm,” Alihahd grunted, commenting to himself, noting something interesting.
Hall raised his eyebrows at him questioningly.
“The uniforms,” Alihahd said. “They never used to wear those.”
The bright metallic blue with red blazons told the galaxy who these soldiers were. The colors reinforced Na′id identity and pride in the Empire. Shad Iliya never used them, preferring less conspicuous battle-drab. But without Shad Iliya, the soldiers of the 27th Army felt increasing need to insist on who they were. They had lost battles since Jerusalem. The blue uniforms were a small sign of slipping morale.
Alihahd touched Musa’s sleeve. “I want everyone in battle fatigues and assembled out here inside of four minutes.”
“Assembled in what order?” Musa asked.
“No particular order. Just so they take a position and hold it.”
“Yes, sir.”
If there was one thing Alihahd’s rebels were trained to do, it was act as if they knew what they were doing in dangerous places where they had no business being and about which they knew no
thing. They were an army of impostors and spies, not soldiers.
As the rebels formed into ranks, the scanner technician came to Alihahd to report that she’d located where the Na′id had been hiding earlier. Their ships had come out of a deep canyon below sea level, between two metallic mountains, less than ten kilometers to the west. Like chameleons, they’d been easily overlooked until they moved. “If we’d taken off, we’d be dead now,” the tech said. “It’d be a skeet shoot. You were right, sir.”
Alihahd nodded without comfort. There was no pleasure in being right when it meant he had saved himself for a fate worse than death.
The Na′id were assembling by battalions, smart and orderly, each by its ship. They outnumbered the rebels six to one.
For the soldiers of the 27th Army, there was something unsettling in facing an enemy wearing Na′id uniforms—and the drab colors they themselves used to wear when they were still undefeated. The more sensitive of them were aware that hidden things were moving here.
Vaslav came from the flagship to report, “The Na′id opened communications. They demand surrender.”
Alihahd’s eyes stayed fixed on the ranks across the plateau. “Refuse.”
Vaslav ran back to the ship’s transceiver to relay the message.
A rebel ship commander beside Alihahd took a quick breath for courage, then spoke. “Do you know what you’re doing, sir?”
Alihahd was showing signs of fear. Sweat beaded his tall forehead. His mouth and eyes were lined in white.
“We’re not an army,” the rebel reminded him.
“They do not know that,” Alihahd said.
“They’ll find out when they attack,” the commander said, suppressed hysteria in his voice.
“If they attack.”
The commander licked salt from his upper lip, then caved in to bald fear. “Captain, do you know who they are?” he blurted. “That’s Shad Iliya’s army. Those people took Jerusalem!”
Blue eyes and white face turned slowly to him. The voice was deep. “I know.”
The commander’s eyes grew huge, and he backed away, choking on a whimper.
Vaslav came bounding back from the flagship, his face bright red. “Sir, their general calls you a madman and demands that you personally reconfirm your answer. He also wants to know if you realize who they are.”
Alihahd put a hand on Vaslav’s hard, spare shoulder. “Confirm the refusal for me. And tell the general this verbatim—verbatim, can you?”
Vaslav nodded intently. His hands were furtively making gentle, nervous motions. Alihahd wanted to slap them.
“Tell the general that I am in the habit of studying thoroughly any opponent, knowing his habits, strengths, weaknesses, motives, and all facts available—pertinent and impertinent. Do you think you have that?”
Vaslav raised his chin and dashed away, his lips moving, reciting to himself.
“And Vaslav!”
The boy turned.
“Tell him I thought Alihahd was dead.”
Vaslav’s face blanked in puzzlement. “Sir?”
“Tell him.”
Musa offered Alihahd her comlink so that Vaslav wouldn’t need to keep shuttling back and forth. Alihahd shook his head. “Let him run. Let them wait.”
A fresh sweat broke over his brow in the late heat of the westering sun. The day was never-ending. These kinds of days never did end. The second-worst day in his entire life. Or was it the worst? He closed his eyes, brushed away a buzzing yellow fly. O God, O God, he cried inside. And imagined he heard an ironic voice answer, Yes?
He opened his eyes, despairing.
Vaslav returned, unnerved. He’d been prepared for anger from the Na′id general at the message, but he hadn’t been ready for quite the violence of the reaction. There had been more to that message he recited than was apparent. “Sir, the general is hopping mad. He turned that color.” Vaslav pointed at a bright red Na′id badge. Alihahd was the only rebel not in uniform. By now all the rebels, including Vaslav, were in battle drab.
“The general wants to know who you think you are,” Vaslav said. “Because you’re not the man you’re pretending to be. No one ever was or will be. And all Alihahd’s cowardly tricks can’t change that.” Vaslav’s voice faltered. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “He wants you to quit hiding your face and come to the transceiver and look him in the eyes, because he already knows that yours—your eyes—aren’t . . . blue.”
Alihahd nodded. He slowly blinked his blue eyes. “Thank you.”
“No message?”
“Not for the transceiver.”
“Sir?” Vaslav began, bewildered. He was carrying every word that passed between the two leaders, yet he hadn’t the least idea what was being said and why their words fell on each other so hard. And besides that, Alihahd’s eyes were blue. “Who are you pretending to be?”
Alihahd sighed. “Not.” He took off the broad-brimmed hat and gave it back to Musa. He limped forward from the ranks in the direction of the Na′id ships, hesitated, then continued out toward the perimeter of the shield dome. His skin tingled as he passed through the force field, his movements slowed, like walking through mud, till he was out of the dome.
The rebels gasped. “Is he mad? He’ll be killed!”
Harrison Hall rocked back on his heels, amused. “A little mad, maybe. Killed? Not yet, I think.”
He could see Alihahd’s white skin even at a distance, and fancied he was even more pale than normal. Alihahd was horrified, and it was not fear of death. He wished he was dead. He could not have been more sickened and terrified walking into a fire and knowing his flesh would burn.
Nothing stirred during his slow progress out to stand between the two armies. Everyone was quiet, watching his painful advance. He forgot to breathe, then breathed too quickly, feeling the pressure of the air now, the effects of descending too far too fast.
I want a drink. He could have in all reality murdered Hall for making him go through this cold sober.
The Na′id didn’t shoot him. A murmur rolled back through their ranks. Alihahd didn’t dare look at faces. He kept his gaze fixed strictly over their heads. Then, because he could no longer resist, he glanced down once. Their faces, the whole sea of them, read pure shock. Ice trickled through Alihahd’s stomach, guts, groin, and into his jellied legs, and he stopped. This was far enough. At the next step he would fall.
He held his position there, midway, and let them stare. His mouth felt full of bitter pins. His heart wobbled high in his chest. The palms of his hands throbbed. He felt faint. Not even God can help me. He forced himself to untense his muscles. As if God actually would.
He swallowed, gathered his breath low, and found his voice. “Soldiers of the Empire!” he thundered. The voice carried over the plain and rebounded off the mountains, steady, loud, and resonant.
Alihahd prayed the voice would not break on him. It never had.
He was dying inside, everyone staring at him—those blank, horrified faces. If he looked at them again, he would freeze. He heard their murmurs, the deadly secret spreading.
“Yes, I know who you are!” he shouted at them with a fury that was really fear. “You are my enemy!”
The murmurs silenced. Alihahd glanced down quickly at their glassy faces, every one of them unmoving, as if they were watching a special weapon of theirs—a big gun they once had—which had made them feel so powerful and invincible while it was theirs, till this day it turned around and they were looking up its barrel and feeling very small. You are my enemy.
He shouldn’t have looked. It was some moments before he could speak again. In the silence the Na′id fear mounted to near panic. Alihahd needed to be careful. Cornered beasts bit. O God, if you get me out of this without a battle, I will never presume to lead a body of your people ever again.
The Na′id believed themselves cornered.
Alihahd would show them an out and hope they ran for it without realizing he was all roar and no teeth.
“If there be a battle today, you will attack. I will not. The decision for bloodshed is yours entirely.” He paused, and watched their panic abate a degree. “But,” he shouted, and they flinched. “Know it be me you fight, and you know better than anyone that I have never lost a battle.”
Even the young soldiers who had never known him were stunned. His image was aboard every ship. The soldiers of the 27th visited his shrine before every mission.
God had left and joined the other side.
The shift in morale could be felt across the plateau.
Both sides were astounded. Alihahd sensed his rebels behind him reeling, and he was sick again at the prospect of turning around and looking back. His stomach had gone from ice to water.
He saw movement in the Na′id ranks—a single person walking forward out of the camp toward midfield. Alihahd knew him—a broad, stolid bulk in general’s uniform, older than Alihahd, with silvering black hair, not much changed from thirteen years ago when everything was normal and this man was his lieutenant commander.
Ra′im Mishari trudged out for conference with the enemy captain. His steps were tired, and a thick forefinger worried at the tight collar of his uniform in the damp heat. For all the years of Ra′im Mishari’s service, the computer still could not fit a collar to the general’s taurine neck. Even that had not changed.
General Ra′im Mishari came to Alihahd and stopped. He and Alihahd faced each other in silence, awkward as two former lovers.
Alihahd stood at his full height, his eyes turned down to his old second.
Ra′im Mishari’s heavy brows contracted. His square jaw moved, grinding. His broad chest expanded. He started to say “General,” but blurted out with a cry of pain, “Shadi!” and nothing to follow. Just his name. He felt like shedding tears, but a leader could not before two armies.
Alihahd waited, with no compulsion to say anything.
Ra′im snorted, opened his collar. He looked up. “I worshipped you.”
“That was a serious mistake on your part,” Alihahd said.
A cloud passed over the sinking sun. Ra′im Mishari glanced toward it in relief, then back to Alihahd to say matter-of-factly, “You realize you just shot our morale to hell.”