by S. J. Madill
When the elevator doors opened again, they were in one of the Kaha Ranila's cavernous hangars. The high-pitched whines of a dozen idling shuttles stabbed at her ears, along with distorted voices coming through loudspeakers, and the sharp barks of sergeants giving orders to their troops.
A group of officers waited for Zura. Four wore blue armour like hers, but without the gold Mahasa's stripe. Colonel Mwangi was nearby with other staff officers; they divided their time between paying attention to what Zura told her generals, and speaking amongst themselves.
Beyond them, the shuttles awaited: graceful winged ships with wide stern ramps. Behind each, a line of black-armoured soldiers marched aboard as their sergeants stood nearby.
The group of generals bowed to Zura and departed, each headed briskly to a different shuttle. Zura didn't look back; she just started across the hangar deck toward one of the waiting shuttles. Mwangi had broken off from the gaggle of staff officers and rushed to catch up to her; the moment he was within range, she turned her head toward him and started talking, rattling off a list of things she wanted done. Mwangi didn't say a word; he just listened, his fingers swirling on his datasheet. Irasa kept pace, two steps behind Zura, and Pari had to take long strides to keep up. Here she was, a part of the history happening in front of her. But the day's events weren't going to wait for her. Her job was to keep up and keep out of the way.
As they approached the ramp at the rear of the shuttle, the troops took notice. They stopped and turned to bow to Zura, but she waved them off and took her place in line behind them. The waiting troops looked nonchalant, while their sergeant stood on the ramp and kept up an impressive string of obscenity-laden encouragement.
As Zura boarded the shuttle, Mwangi behind her, the sergeant paused a moment and faced Pari. "Ma'am," they said, pointing into the ship with a hand held like a knife blade. "Starboard side, halfway up," before reverting seamlessly back to Palani and continuing their tirade.
The cabin was already full, with seated soldiers along both sides. Dozens of Palani faces turned to watch as they went by, headed up the middle of the shuttle. They barely even noticed her; all eyes were on Zura. Pari watched their faces: these Palani soldiers, each the veteran of years or centuries of warfare, watched Zura pass in front of them with a combination of awe and reverence; maybe even intimidation. This wasn't the Zura she knew, but the Zura from centuries past: calm, confident, comfortable.
Helmet still under her arm, Zura sat in the middle of three empty seats on the shuttle's starboard side. Across from her, Irasa dropped down between two tough-looking soldiers who shuffled sideways to make room.
Mwangi sat next to Zura, leaving just the empty seat on Zura's right. For a moment, Pari was the only person standing in the shuttle full of black-armoured soldiers. Serious faces watched her, and she felt self-conscious as she stepped past Mwangi and Zura and sat down. To her right, a heavily-scarred Palani soldier grunted his acknowledgement.
The whine of the engines increased to a howl, and the sergeant was shouting to make themselves heard. The shuttle tilted as it lifted off the hangar deck, causing Pari to bump shoulders with the soldier next to her. Across from her, the soldiers had looks of boredom, either genuine or affected, and seemed indifferent to it all. Two of them — one man, one woman — were looking from Zura to Pari and back again, while speaking quietly to each other. She wondered what they were thinking. Were they wondering what the Mahasa saw in this human who was so out of place? Wondering why she'd come along? Complaining about having to keep an eye on the Mahasa's pet?
The light outside the windows shifted as the shuttle banked. Pari could see the underside of the Kaha Ranila, barely a kilometre above the city's rooftops. The view out the window swung again as the shuttle manoeuvred; Pari's stomach churned as she caught sight of the other shuttles: one was on fire and belching smoke as it veered away from the formation. The engines howled louder, and it was too loud to think.
An elbow jabbed her left arm, and she turned.
Zura was looking at her. Pari wanted to say something, but it was too loud in the shuttle to talk. Zura raised an eyebrow, nodding as if in question.
Pari pursed her lips, trying to force a smile. She didn't want say how scared she was. How she'd forgotten how much she hated the ride down, at the mercy of the enemy anti-air gunners. Hoping not to be the shuttle that they tried to shoot out of the sky.
Another nod, and Zura turned away toward Mwangi on her other side. Pari was left in her own thoughts, trying to keep her stomach under control as the shuttle swayed back and forth. More bright lights flickered outside, crackling in the air beyond the window. Occasionally, the shuttle would swing far to one side, letting her see the Kaha Ranila from below. Beams of brilliant white erupted from the dreadnought's secondary laser batteries, searing the air past them, tracing paths into the distance.
The shuttle lurched, and Pari saw Irasa's head loll to one side. The giant woman had fallen asleep. She heard laughter from the soldiers next to Irasa: the ones who'd been sharing some private comment earlier. One of them made eye contact with her, and nodded toward the sleeping Irasa. They smiled and shrugged; they couldn't believe it either.
New yelling from the back of the shuttle: the sergeant was on their feet again. They held an overhead rail with one hand while the other shoved their helmet on their head. The harangue barely even paused, resuming uninterrupted through their helmet's speaker.
Pari's hands were shaking as she raised her helmet and slid it over her head. A moment's darkness was broken by the display sputtering to life with lines of Palani computer text flowing past. It was running through a checklist, and halfway through she could suddenly hear the sergeant again, their stream of Palani invective coming loud and clear through her helmet's speakers. She knew enough Palani to understand. Landing in ten seconds.
Her heart and her stomach were both trying to force their way up her throat. Across from her, Irasa was awake with her helmet on. The two soldiers next to Irasa weren't laughing now; they were checking each other's gear. To Pari's left, Zura poked her fingers at something inside her helmet before putting it on. Out the windows, the horizon levelled and the tops of buildings rose up past them. A pall of smoke hung over the rooftops, and bright flashes lit the sky like lightning.
The landing was harder than she'd expected. By the time she cleared her thoughts, a dozen things were happening at once. The shuttle's rear ramp was down, and daylight flooded in. Everyone was getting to their feet — the soldier beside her pulled her up — and the sergeant at the rear had escalated their obscenities to a new level. Everyone had their weapons in their hands and they all moved at once, rushing down the ramp and off the shuttle.
Everyone except her seemed to know where they were going; she just tried to keep up with the blue armour in front of her. She barely paid attention to her surroundings, though she saw fire and smoke everywhere, and had to step around debris and craters as she advanced, keeping Zura in sight. It wasn't difficult; Zura wasn't trying to hide. The opposite, in fact: it almost seemed like she wanted to be seen.
Pari followed them along a street, toward the broad plaza at its end. If it had been any other day, it would have been a beautiful place: graceful, elegant buildings on both sides, five or six stories tall. Around her, the Palani soldiers jogged up the street in groups of nine, their black armour easy to spot against the white marble of the buildings. At the end of the street, where it emptied into the plaza, a large monument was surrounded by self-rising barriers. Engineers were adding another ring of barriers: they set briefcase-sized boxes down in the street before backing away as the boxes burst open and foam bulged upward, expanding and hardening into chest-high walls. Beyond the barricaded monument, the paved town square filled with shuttles that landed and disgorged their troops before taking off again.
Pari saw Zura's blue armour passing between the barriers, and rushed to keep up. Over the barrier-ringed command post, bright blue domes of glittering light flickered as
anti-projectile shield generators came to life. Soldiers stood at the barricades, facing outward, concealment-detecting beams shining from the tips of their carbines. There was a professional, orderly rhythm to the activity. Tense, but not frantic. Everyone had a job to do, and set about doing it.
Shining blue in a sea of black, Zura strode to the centre of the barricaded strongpoint, where an officer in blue-shouldered armour waited for her. A dozen staff officers gathered around as the brigadier began briefing the Mahasa on the situation.
Pari stayed away, lingering near the first ring of foam barriers. Clouds of black smoke wafted over the city, under the looming shape of the Kaha Ranila. The dreadnought's laser batteries traced burning lines across the sky.
"Nsal 'neth," she heard Zura say. She turned to look.
Zura had removed her helmet and was holding it in one hand while she poked inside it with the other. The officers around her continued their briefing, though Pari could see their discomfort at Zura going bare-headed. With a last muttered curse, Zura tossed the helmet over her shoulder, then returned her attention to the brigadier.
The discarded helmet hit the ground with a solid thunk, bouncing twice before rolling to a stop a few paces from Pari's feet. Walking over to it, Pari picked it up. She stood quietly, helmet in her hands, and watched. Out in the open square, more shuttles were landing, bringing the third wave of troops down from the fleet.
* * *
A fourth and fifth wave had landed in the time Pari had stood there. Shuttles landed and black-suited troops streamed out, forming into groups under the abuse-laden guidance of their sergeants. They then headed into the city: south, towards the edge of the city and the Temple of the Divines.
Sometime between the fourth and fifth waves, Pari saw Mwangi step away from the gaggle of officers. He came over to where she stood, Zura's helmet in her hands, not knowing quite what to do with herself.
"The assault is paused," he'd told her. "The Temple is surrounded, and negotiations are underway. The Mahasa wishes to gain the safety of the civilians in the Temple."
"Oh," she'd said, because she hadn't known what to say. "Do you think it'll work?"
"Hard to say. The Mahasa is willing to take a risk, if it will spare civilians."
The fifth wave had landed and headed forward, leaving their empty shuttles on the ground in the square. They had barely left the plaza when teams of medics came into the square from the south, pushing wounded soldiers on stretcher-loaders toward the waiting shuttles. Inside her helmet, Pari bit her lip. It was the reality of being in the rear area: fresh troops went forward, and wounded came back. A conveyor of broken bodies needing care, that never seemed to end—
Mwangi appeared beside her again. "Doctor Singh?" he said, the voice coming through her helmet's speakers.
Pari turned around. "Yes?" Conversations were awkward when everyone wore identical, expressionless helmets.
"Doctor, there may be a breakthrough. Pentarch Ivenna is negotiating her escape with three shuttles full of hostages."
"Jesus," whispered Pari. Just like that, Ivenna was going to leave her own people to die? And what of the hostages packed into shuttles with her, hoping that they wouldn't be shot down? "Does the Mahasa think—"
"The Mahasa thinks it is a trap. But if there's a chance to spare civilian lives…" He cocked his head. "I must go."
"Thank you, Colonel," said Pari, as Mwangi turned away and returned to the group of officers.
Zura looked calm, focused, and confident. She listened to the people around her, speaking rarely, occasionally pointing to someone to provide specific information. Zura didn't need to be here on the ground. But like she'd said more than once, leadership was not just about leading, but about being seen to be leading. She wanted her troops to see her. And, thought Pari, she wanted the enemy to see her, too.
A staff officer said something, and all eyes turned to Zura, who took a step away from the centre of the group and looked to the sky. Pari followed Zura's gaze.
After a moment, she saw them: three shuttles rising out of the south, flying in close formation over the western part of the city. Ivenna was actually doing it: fleeing in shuttles full of innocent civilians. Her beliefs laid bare: choosing her survival over her people, her rebellion, her faith. Was it all a sham to Ivenna? Had she really believed the religion she'd spent her life in? Or was it all just a cynical ploy, using religion to gain power? And now that it had failed—
The shuttles stopped in midair. Behind Pari, someone shouted. No, she realised, the shuttles hadn't stopped, they'd turned. Turned toward them. They were accelerating.
More voices were shouting. Beams of light burst upward from the town square, striking the shuttles and flaring their shields bright blue.
Beams of white fire slammed down from the Kaha Ranila. Increasing numbers of rapid-firing beams filled the smoke-filled sky, converging on the accelerating shuttles. One of them burst apart in a ball of fire, half the shuttle cartwheeling down to the rooftops in a shower of debris. The other two kept coming.
Pari couldn't move. She stood, feet fixed to the spot, helmet clutched in her gloved, white-knuckled hands. The two remaining shuttles were hit repeatedly, their shields failing, smoke bursting from within. They fell toward the city, one corkscrewing madly.
One struck the rooftops at the far end of the square, ploughing through the buildings and bursting out the front wall before tumbling along the ground. The other slammed into a row of parked shuttles. Pari stared, unable to move, as the burning shuttle skidded along the ground, gathering parked shuttles in a fiery, debris-laden wall of wreckage that chewed up the plaza as it rolled toward her. Shuttles, wreckage, and bodies were cast aside by the grinding wave of carnage, crunching to a halt mere paces from the outer ring of barriers. The ground trembled and Pari stumbled, her shaking hands losing grip of the blue helmet. She grabbed hold of the nearest barrier to keep from falling, and looked over the top.
The shuttle fuselage had stopped moving; bodies were pouring out the open ramp, falling over each other. Pari reached one hand for the medical pack at her belt and started moving past the first barricade.
She stopped. The bodies weren't tumbling; they were jumping. Some were injured, but most were moving under their own power. White-suited bodies poured out the back of the shuttle, long-bladed knives in their hands, bounding over wreckage, coming toward the barriers.
Artahel.
The first one was already past her. She'd never seen people move so fast. They leapt over the barriers, throwing themselves at the soldiers. She heard gunfire. Yelling. Screams of pain. More white-clad bodies charging past. One ran by so close Pari could've touched the youthful Palani woman with bared teeth and hatred in her eyes. A long knife flashed, then the Artahel was past her.
Pari checked her armour, unsure if she'd been cut. Someone shoved against her from behind; she turned around.
The soldier next to her had pulled off her helmet and was clutching at her sliced neck, eyes wide. She stared at Pari, blood gurgling from her mouth, then fell heavily to her knees.
Pari didn't even think. She clamped one hand over the deep gash on the soldier's neck, and guided the woman to the ground. Keeping one hand tight on the soldier, Pari's other hand reached into the pack on her waist. Fingers found what they were searching for.
"Scan," she commanded her helmet. Nothing happened. She tried to focus, and remember the Palani word. "Selet, damn it."
Superimposed on her view was a scan inside the woman's neck. Airway, muscles, and blood vessels, all cut through. Tension was pulling the cut ends of the veins deeper inside, away from the wound. Vital signs were crashing.
Pari pulled a thin, centimetre-long tube from her pack. Releasing her grip on the woman's neck, she slid the tube into the wound, past the pulsing blue blood. Inside her helmet, the scan showed her the tube unfolding, its tips seeking out the ends of the receding vein and clamping themselves on. She worked calmly but quickly, shoving more auto-stents into th
e wound, using the scans to guide them as they latched onto the severed ends of blood vessels and pulled them together. The flood of cold blue blood slowed, then stopped. The soldier's wide eyes stared up at her, too scared to move as Pari kept working. A brace around the neck, an injection, and she was done. Muscles and nerves could wait for a surgeon; the soldier would live to see one, and that would have to do. As the soldier faded into sedated calm, Pari tried to remember the Palani phrase for 'don't move', but nothing came to mind. "Asta", she said. Stay.
She'd been so focused on her patient, she'd lost track of what was going on around her. She looked up.
There were bodies on the ground. Officers and soldiers lay among dozens of Artahel; blue blood pooled on the pavement. Soldiers fought hand-to-hand against the last of the assassins. Through her helmet's speakers, she heard the grunts and yells of fighting and the moaning of the injured.
And in the middle of it all, Zura.
Irasa was on her knees beside the Mahasa, struggling to get back to her feet. A broken sword blade stuck out of the giant's leg, and another was jammed in under her breastplate. Dead Artahel lay around her.
Zura's face was spattered in blood. She held half of her carbine in her hand, and swung it at the sword-wielding Artahel in front of her. The assassin's sword was knocked away, the broken carbine discarded with it. Grabbing a knife from her belt, Zura lunged toward the disarmed Artahel, plunging the blade deep into the man's abdomen, shoving it up under his ribcage. With a yell, she pulled the knife back; it sliced out through his sternum, splashing blood on her face. She let the dying man fall, her attention already switched to another Artahel who ran at her, sword raised, screaming. Pari watched dumbfounded as Zura charged at the white-clad Artahel.