by Cheree Alsop
The sounds of fighting in the tunnels slowed, then ceased altogether. Liora barely dared to open her eyes. It took all of her concentration to keep up the push. Surprise almost undermined her efforts when she saw the Cherum warriors and Vos crowding in front of her in silence.
A circle roughly five feet in front and behind her was kept clear as if by some unspoken agreement, but beyond that, warriors and Vos stood side by side as if they couldn’t get enough of the emotions she was pushing. The hostility was gone from both sets of faces. The warriors waited quietly, their staves abandoned and wounds bleeding.
The Vos were in similar shape. Of those closest, one was missing an eye and several had gouges out of their scaled hides; yet they waited, and the sound of breaths through their heaving chests gave the only sign that the battle still remained in their hearts.
Liora carefully eased back on the push. She felt Tariq’s hand rest on her shoulder. She was touched by his offering of strength, but she pulled the emotions not because she couldn’t maintain them any longer, but to see if the calmness could continue without her blanketing them with the soothing emotions.
She was able to ease up much further than she thought she would. When signs of agitation, shifting from foot to foot or reaching for weapons began to surface, Liora pushed just enough to calm them again. Maintaining careful control, Liora lifted her voice.
“I think we’ve all been fooled,” she told them. “The Cherum are taking this planet by force for themselves and the Vos are defending their home.”
At the sound of her voice, several of the Vos started, but Liora pushed at them images of a land free of the complex. She was met with feelings of happiness.
“I need to know for sure,” Liora continued. “I need to return to the complex to find out for myself what the Cherum are up to.” She paused, then said, “It may be that we need to change our objective.”
Silence met her words, then a warrior called out, “Whatever you say, Commander.”
Nods went through the gathering. Warriors holding bloody arms and torsos appeared less concerned about their injuries than they did her words. She wondered how the Cherum would feel about having their channeled aggression turned.
“I have to be sure,” she said. “I will go alone.”
“I won’t let you do that,” Tariq replied.
Liora set a hand on his arm. “If they guess my intentions, I won’t get past the door. As it is, I need you there to let in the others.”
Tariq shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
Liora gave him her most confident smile. “We’ve got an army at our backs. Let’s make sure we’re fighting for the right side.”
She informed the Vos of her course of action with an image of her speaking to the Cherum. To her relief, the Vos followed quietly as she led the way back up the long tunnel.
Chapter 8
It felt strange to hear the scraping of claws alongside the steady footprints of the Cherum warriors. The combatants who had fought so devastatingly only minutes before walked side by side under the steady push of harmony she sent them. Liora could only hope she could keep it up when she was inside the Cherum’s complex.
The door opened at her approach. When she stepped inside with Tariq, she was surprised to see a single Cherum waiting within the great room. The vastness appeared even more so with only the individual Cherum to take up space. She reminded herself that any Cherum spoke for the mass; they were one entity. The thought of a plague entered her mind. She dismissed it quickly before the unsettling feeling it brought reached those waiting in the tunnel.
“Have you accomplished your task so quickly?” the Cherum asked, his eyes green.
Liora stopped a few feet away. She felt his gaze on the blood streaking her clothing and hair.
“You could say things are a standstill,” she replied.
The Cherum’s gaze turned yellow. “How is that possible?” he asked.
Liora lifted her shoulders in a small, calculated shrug. “Perhaps we’ve reached an understanding.”
The Cherum’s eyes shifted to red. “The only understanding is that the Vos are to be destroyed.”
“Let’s put aside pretenses,” Liora suggested.
She pushed into his mind, hesitated at what she found, then pressed even further.
The Cherum’s brain wasn’t structured like anything she had ever encountered. Instead of feeling as though she was inside a single being, the Cherum’s thoughts flowed through some sort of thought network that branched the entire complex, connecting every Cherum together as one. She could feel them all at the same time, the identical need for sustenance, safety, and knowledge, the unattached composure with which they viewed implanting the army to fight for them, the want to be the superior race.
Liora’s heart slowed when she found the memory bank. She began to sort through the recollections, and with each one, her emotions became harder to maintain.
The Cherum landed on a green planet and used its army to destroy the creatures living there. Another craft followed, this one filled with millions of Cherum that swarmed the planet like locusts, picking it dry of every resource possible. The Cherum used the microchips to make the army kill themselves. When the planet was used up, drained and dead, the Cherum went to the next and built another army.
Images of trading resources for warriors interspersed remembrances of watching the army destroy everything in its path and then kill themselves so the Cherum craft could come and suck the planet dry of any valuable ore, food, water, or other valuables left by slaying the host species.
Liora had to stop looking. She could feel the tenuous hold she had on her emotions slipping.
“You only destroy,” she said, bringing herself back to the present so she could address the Cherum.
“So do you,” he replied.
The statement, delivered in calm tones, made her furious.
“You wipe out families, races, for your own wellbeing,” she stated.
“A trait I admire of the Damaclan,” the Cherum replied.
Liora’s hands clenched into fists. “I may be a killer, but even I know that life has a purpose. I don’t destroy it lightly.”
“And you feel that we do?” the Cherum asked.
“Yes,” Liora growled.
She crossed to the Cherum and grabbed his neck in her hands. He watched her, his gaze purple with amusement.
“What do you think killing one of us will do? We are many upon many. We will continue to come here until the Vos are gone. Even as we speak, more warriors are being made. Your paltry few won’t be able to stop us.”
Liora glanced behind her at Tariq who waited near the door. At her nod, he walked to the wall and the oval opened wide.
“We are no longer a paltry few,” Liora replied.
She saw the Cherum’s gaze flicker to the yellow of surprise as the warriors and Vos flooded into the room.
“How do I call the ship down?” Liora demanded.
“Y-you can’t,” the Cherum replied.
Liora glared at him. “Who can?”
The Cherum didn’t answer, so Liora pushed into his mind. His yellow eyes widened as she searched. She found what she wanted and pulled back. The army around her had gathered in a circle with her and the Cherum in the middle. Not a sound came from them. They were expecting her to be the leader and example.
Liora drove a fist into the Cherum’s chest and when he doubled over, she grabbed his neck and spun, snapping it easier than she had thought possible. She let the body fall to the floor. Respect showed on the faces of those around her.
“There’s a central creature,” she said when she pulled back. “It’s a core of sorts, the Center. It communicates with the rest of the Cherum. Find it and lead me to it.”
“Yes, Commander,” one of the Cherum army said.
Liora caught herself. They weren’t the Cherum army. They were her army.
“Call me Warden,” she told him. “Find the rest of this army they are creat
ing and give them the choice to join us or die with the Cherum.”
The warrior who had spoken saluted with one clawed hand and took off down the closest hallway. The others flowed after him.
“You’re commanding them?” Tariq asked. A drop of blood slid from the blade in his hand to the floor.
“Somebody has to,” Liora replied. “I can’t imagine an army like this running around the Macrocosm without someone to keep them in check. They’re dangerous.”
“Which is why you choose to lead them,” Tariq replied.
Liora glanced at him. “Yes, with your help.”
Tariq nodded. “They need someone who understands.”
Liora looked at the body near her feet. Killing the Cherum hadn’t felt like the deaths she was used to. When she snapped his neck, it had been more like breaking a branch on a tree. The Cherum wasn’t a life separately, but instead was a part of a whole. In searching his mind, Liora had found that the being didn’t have a name, because he wasn’t an individual. He wasn’t even a ‘he’. The Cherum was a single petal from the same flower, yet it wasn’t a flower. This race was a weed, choking off the life of the creatures around it without a care for their existence.
“They need to be stopped,” Liora said.
She knew Tariq would take her at her word, but she didn’t want to be the only one who understood the full impact of what she was about to undertake. She didn’t accept race annihilation lightly; yet that was exactly what she needed to do.
She pushed her thoughts to Tariq, showing him the things she had learned about the Cherum. His eyes closed as he was flooded with the images. When she stopped pushing and he opened his eyes again, anger sparked in them.
“They need to be stopped,” he agreed, his hands clenched so tightly around his knives that his knuckles showed white.
“Warden, we’ve found the Center,” a warrior called.
Blue blood dripped from the slit mouth of the Cherum that lay motionless on the floor. Liora walked past without glancing down. She knew it was there; she didn’t have to see it. It felt wrong that the creature should bleed. For a race so ruthless as to brainwash an army to do their dirty work, then move onto the planet and kill the entire army when the planet was theirs, she thought they shouldn’t bleed. They didn’t deserve the honor.
“We didn’t know what we were looking for, but we knew it when we saw it,” a humanoid warrior with bright blue eyes and orange hair said.
When she looked at him, he bowed his head in deference. He couldn’t have been much younger than she.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
His gaze when he looked at her again showed his surprise. He shook his head and lowered it.
“I don’t have one.”
“You did before you were given to the Cherum,” she pressed. “What was it?”
He was silent for a moment, then said, “Korgutan.”
Liora nodded. “Well done finding the Center, Korgutan. Tell the others I want to deal with it myself.”
He immediately jogged ahead.
“This isn’t going to end well, you know,” Tariq said from her other side.
“I’ll find out how to summon the ship and the army will take care of the rest,” Liora replied.
“That’s not what I meant,” Tariq pointed out.
Liora refused to answer. She knew exactly what Tariq was talking about, and she didn’t want to go there.
Tariq must have felt the opposite. “They’re all going to die. You saw what the Cherum do to them. The chip can drive them mad.”
“If we let it,” Liora replied.
Tariq shook his head. “We don’t know how to control it.”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
Liora refused to say anything else.
They walked down the hallway and stepped into the door Korgutan held for them. Liora stopped short at what she saw.
Tariq gave a grunt of surprise and his hold tightened on his blade.
“That’s not going to be any help here,” she said quietly.
“I’m not sure anything is,” Tariq replied.
Chapter 9
Liora stared at the being that took up the majority of the domed room. It looked like a Cherum with its pale skin, long neck, and fingers twice-again as long as its arms, but the size was far different. The being towered above them, bigger by far than Liora had pictured.
The Cherum sat in the room with its long legs bent at the knees and its neck bowed against the curve of the ceiling. The hands, each of which were taller than Tariq, lay open and the fingers followed the circular walls, reaching halfway around. It looked as though the room had been built around the being, encasing its vastness so that it couldn’t escape. Red eyes stared down at Liora. She felt as though she could step inside of them and be swallowed up by their anger.
“You are destroying the Cherum.”
Liora answered its unspoken words aloud for Tariq’s sake and for the warriors who filed into the room behind her. The blue blood that covered their blades said multitudes. She wondered where the Vos had gone.
“You are destroying worlds.”
The Cherum’s red gaze glared down at her.
“Are you judgmental of our methods, Damaclan? Ironic, considering that we have patterned our means after your ancestors who destroyed our planet and left us homeless.”
The response surprised her, but Liora didn’t let it show.
“These planets are not Damaclan,” she replied. “No matter what my ancestors did to you, the Vos and the others you have killed were innocent.”
“We were innocent.”
The growl rocked her mind with its force. It was all she could do to keep her hands at her sides and not attempt in vain to block out the sound by covering her ears.
Liora retorted with a push of her own.
Summon your ship.
The Cherum’s eyes flickered to yellow, then back to red.
No.
The denial was absolute. If Liora could not get the ship to land, she couldn’t stop the rest of the Cherum. There had to be a way.
“I’ve got to push at him, but he’s strong,” Liora said quietly to Tariq.
“Use my strength,” he told her.
Liora would have normally refused, but she felt the force of the Cherum’s push. It was going to take more than she had.
Liora accepted the hand Tariq offered. It was something she had never tried before. She didn’t want Tariq to be the one she experimented on, but she had no choice. She pulled gently, and felt as much as heard the surprised intake of breath he gave at the show of her abilities. Strength filled her.
If you won’t give me answers, I’ll take them, Liora said. She pushed with their combined strength.
Liora found her ability blocked as though she hit a metal door. She gathered her strength and honed it to a point, then shoved it at the Cherum with every bit of energy she had.
The Cherum’s head rocked back and its eyes swirled with a multitude of colors. Its defenses dropped and Liora surged into its thoughts.
Where the others had been a part of its network, this giant’s thoughts were a tangled web of synapses, sending out commands that went nowhere due to its slain Cherum. It was obvious the loss of the being’s underlings had taking a toll.
Liora found a wide path where the majority of the Cherum’s thoughts pooled. She followed it along a winding tapestry of images and memories, sorting through them as quickly as she could.
She paused.
A great spacecraft unlike anything she had seen before surfaced in the Cherum’s mind. It was filled with thoughts of clan. There weren’t exactly the emotions she associated with family, but it was more like how she felt about the Damaclan race. She belonged; if there was anything more to it than that, she didn’t care to explore it.
Her heart sped up at the next thought that surfaced from the Cherum’s mind.
“The ship is already on its way,” she told Tariq.
“Get out of my head!” the Cherum thought and shouted at her.
Liora stumbled back from the force of the command. Tariq caught her before she fell.
The connection vanished. Liora looked up into the huge being’s eyes which showed angry, dark red.
“Your reign of terror is at an end,” Liora said.
“We took the lives of lesser races so that ours could live,” the Cherum replied. ”We are the superior race. We deserve to flourish.”
“Not preying on the lives of other people and planets that you just throw away like garbage,” Liora pointed out.
“They are ours to use however we wish.” The Cherum glared down at her and said as well as pushed, ”No mere Damaclan with the ability to mindspeak is going to change that.”
“You don’t know who you’re talking to,” Tariq said.
Liora gave a grim smile. “And I’m not alone.”
At her gesture, Tariq stepped aside. The army of Vos flooded into the chamber. They scaled the walls on their quick, padded feet, surrounding the Cherum who glared at them as if they were a pestilence. Unfortunately for the Cherum, they looked at the being the same way.
“It’s time for your race to be done,” Liora said.
“Your time will come soon enough,” the Cherum replied.
Liora walked out of the room. As soon as she and Tariq stepped through the door, it closed and she heard the whisper of thousands of feet thundering along the floor and walls. Pain flashed through Liora’s mind, then silenced.
One of the warriors, the same one with the blue eyes and orange hair, asked, “What are we waiting for?”
Liora looked around at the army awaiting her answer. They were silent, but covered in the blood of their enemies.
“The Cherum used you,” she told them. “Their plan was to end your lives using the same microchips they implanted in your brains for battle.”
Several of the warriors glanced at each other. Surprised looks were exchanged. Doubt and betrayal showed among the myriad of emotions.
“They’ve been doing this for centuries,” Liora continued. “They buy an army, microchip them for efficiency, and use them to wipe out the population of whatever planet they choose. They’ve done this countless times, and even more lives have been forfeit by their lack of respect for a living soul. Unfortunately for them, with all the planets in this galaxy, they chose Basttist.”
