by Chad Huskins
A single hand went up. Lyokh recognized the man’s face from his profile.
“Yes, Ziir?”
“Did you even want this assignment?”
Heeten, Meiks, and Takirovanen stared daggers at the insubordinate tone.
Lyokh tried on another smile. He was getting used to smiling. It was a combination of gallows humor and his time spent with Heeten and the others that did it.
“If I had my way, Ziir,” he said, “I’d be on a garden world, with two women who don’t know the meaning of the word ‘clothes’, and who worship the Cult of Lyokh and want nothing more than to please their god until the sun goes down.” A ripple of laughter spread through the group, Meiks’s loudest of all. “So no, I didn’t want this job. But like I said, I’m a soldier. I do what I’m told and I adapt. I move forward until there is no more forward.”
Ziir cracked a smile, and nodded.
“Now, hoy up. It’s three weeks to Widden and we’ve got a princess to save.”
That got a bigger laugh, now that the tension had been let out of the room. Chairs moaned as the group stood up, and men and women chatted as they moved to the door.
Then, a voice came from the back of the group. It came from a tall, skinny kid, whose name was Abethik. He shouted out, “The wall!” as he held up one fist.
Lyokh paused. Looked at him. The kid’s eyes blazed with angry fervor.
Lyokh exchanged glances with Heeten and the others. Then he nodded and said, “Damn right, soldier. The wall.”
With that, they got to work.
HOURS LATER, LYOKH was sitting at the tiny desk in his billet, freezing and huddled in a blanket, reading a stack of slinkplast documents. It was dark. The ship’s night cycle was almost upon it, so lights had been dimmed or switched off in certain areas to conserve power. The darkness was leavened, though, by the glow from his holotab, which projected a map of Widden in front of him.
The team had done good today. Gold Wing may yet live, he thought, reflecting on their initial PT trials. They had all certainly seemed up for getting back into the game, even if some of them did wear solemn looks while they performed. Survivor’s guilt, no doubt. Training will help distract them from their grief.
Lyokh yawned and stretched his arms. He had just returned from a lesson with Herodinsk. The blademaster had been adamant about the exactness of his angles tonight, as well as the perfect alignment of his wrists on each swing, and there had been some harsh tests with the training bots, all of which had been dialed up to eighty percent power. It had been brutal.
Massaging his wrists, he glanced over at the rotating image on his desk. It was a woman in a green and red robe, resplendent in glittering rubies and diamonds, her face concealed by an ominous black mask with wicked designs. High Priestess Zane, the Governor of Phanes. Lyokh recalled growing up on a world full of religious fanatics. He wondered if that was another reason he had been selected to lead Gold Wing for this mission. Would they be interacting with the aristocracy of Widden?
I hope not, he thought.
A chime went off. The night cycle had officially commenced. It had been a long day. Tomorrow would be another one.
Lyokh finally lay down, his head sinking into a stale, stiff pillow that was in need of replacing. As he drifted off to sleep, he let go of his physical self, and cast his mind towards some distant and unknowable conflict.
And he dreamed of wyrms. Wyrms so large their scaly bodies covered whole continents, and their slavering jaws sunk deep into the mantle of whole worlds, drinking in the magma like a vampire would drink in blood.
Echoes…echoes of the dark laughter, a fugue of inimical voices aimed directly at his small mortal mind.
Lyokh shivered throughout he night, his hands clawing unconsciously at the air, as though trying to climb out of some dark pit only he could see.
The next day, Lyokh did the responsible thing and reported the reoccurring dreams to the military shrink. It was chalked up to lucid dreaming and the delayed shock of Kennit. He was prescribed something to help him sleep. He supposed he shouldn’t have expecting anything more than that. After all, what are one man’s dreams at the Fall of Man?
: Phanes 28981d [Widden]
She stepped out of her hot spring bath and walked, water dripping from her naked body, over to the stone rails that overlooked the city of Vastill. A swath of unrivaled beauty lay before her, a perfect mix of Man’s architecture and Nature’s design. Soaring, vine-covered towers reared above a city of old cobblestone and glittering compristeel. The city contained half a billion people, and was so vast that its west side could know night, while the eastern side knew day. The Dexannonhold, her family’s palace, was within view of the city walls. Beyond those walls, emerald green forests fanned out in all directions, terminating at the towering snow-capped mountains in the west, where the suns Reta and Tupenda rested in the cradle of the mountain ridge. Striations of clouds crossed the endless sky, set aflame by those suns. All four moons assumed their positions in the sky. Rah’zen, the largest of them, loomed over the world like the disapproving god it was named for.
She cast her eyes south.
At the foot of the mountain was a river of foaming water that broke at several deltas, splintering in a dozen different directions, and a calm lake that reflected the populated sky. A smile played on Thessa’s lips as her mind turned back the clock, thinking of when she had gone swimming in that lake as a girl, her father pulling her out, only to toss her back in laughing.
Dying sunlight touched her face, and a cool late-evening breeze brought chills to her glistening skin. The shadows of the mountains crawled over the rooftops, fingers of darkness reaching towards the Dexannonhold where she now stood atop.
She heard the sound of a door open behind her, then shut. Then came soft, barefooted steps on stone. She turned, found her maidservant there. Myelic, short and golden-haired, approached with an expectant smile.
“Myelic,” Thessa said.
“Good evening, my lady. Would you like your evening sweetness?”
Thessa thought about it for a moment, then said, “I would.”
Myelic slipped off her white silk robes, got on her knees, and crawled on all fours over to the High Priestess.
As was their ritual most nights, Thessa bent over just slightly, allowing Myelic to press her face between her lady’s cheeks. She licked lightly, and lovingly. As she watched the stars begin to populate the sky, Thessa leaned against the balcony, crossed her legs, and pushed her fingers between her thighs. It was slow and satisfying, and also meditative. Nothing cleared her mind like Myelic’s soft tongue, and nothing gave Myelic greater joy than to please her lady.
When they were done, and Thessa had been brought to quivering climax, they stood atop the Dexannonhold, holding each other and looking out over the world that Thessa’s family had wrought. Once, it was said, Widden had been a lump of rock with no life and only a thinning atmosphere. Seven hundred years of mining was what it took, while at the same time constructing the atmo generators, which now stood as rusting relics in the distant poles. Seven hundred years of toil before the first humans could walk the surface of Widden without a suit or breathing apparatus. Two thousand years after that, they had all this.
They had Vastill.
Some people spoke of the entertainment to be found in Widden’s other three megalopolises, but none were so diverting as Vastill. None had Vastill’s art and verve, none could produce the poets Vastill did, for none could inspire prose and lyric like Vastill’s sweeping views. Thessa looked at the colorful banners that hung from every window at evening, fluttering in the wind.
She often wondered why her father had left this place. She wondered why anyone would.
And yet, people were fleeing. There went another large shuttle now, packed with a thousand or more evacuees, heading for Lagrange points where they would sit and watch their world die.
Though she had ordered the evacuation herself, Thessa would not be going anywhere.
The space between each ring of pyramids was filled with sweeping green vistas, verdant hills and green forests, and wildlife refuges that were kept rigidly in balance. The middle rings of each city were permitted to have buildings many thousands of feet tall, whereas the outer rings were mandated to remain only single-story, with many of the inhabitants living belowground.
The rest of the planet was mostly untouched virgin land, only the occasional villa resting atop a mountain here and there, or a country road stretching over a few low-tech farmlands tended by drones. One hundred million hectares of carefully cultivated genetically enhanced crops supplied food not only to Widden, but to all colonies across Phanes.
It was a world kept in strict balance, one of the few true garden worlds left. Many Republic refugees wanted to flee here, naturally, make their home on Widden, but great distances and other concerns, such as the Brood, the Ascendancy and others, kept such an influx at bay.
Of course, that meant that such threats would soon be upon this lush world. Thessa Zane den Uta, High Priestess of Mahl, Last of the Zanus, Wardeness of Widden and Governor of Phanes, was not so foolish that she did not understand that. Their own paltry fleets were little more than the ships they used to scan the Phanes System for the multitudinous wild asteroids and comets it was known for.
That’s why the fleets have to come, she thought. Thessa had tried so hard to keep the Republic out of their business here, but as Governor of Phanes, she had had no choice but to reach out for help. Her thanes had agreed. As happy as they had been in their isolationism, it was time to admit that they had probably been naïve these last hundred years.
Night falls on us all, she had been taught. Estin-lak said so, in his Teachings on Mahl’s Prophecies. That’s how Mahl would have it, truly. She knew that. As High Priestess of the Faith, it was her job to know that. All worlds were eventually brought to degradation, as were all men and women.
But degradation pleased Mahl, who it was said slumbered in a black hole somewhere, waiting to devour the universe.
As night fell, Thessa held Myelic close, breast to breast, stroking her golden hair. They gazed into one another’s eyes. Rah’zen became bright and dominant, and the other three moons took to hiding cheekily behind the veil of scattered clouds.
“Do you require more sweetness tonight, my lady?” Myelic asked.
“I shouldn’t think so,” she said. “But stay close, I may change my mind.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Thessa gave her a soft kiss. She bit Myelic’s lower lip, drawing blood. Myelic let the droplets run down her chin, and smiled at her High Priestess. Myelic looked best when red.
Thessa looked at the gathering night. “Have the others arrived?”
“They have, my lady.”
“Then dress me.”
There were many servants, but only Myelic had the honor of dressing her lady, only she knew the steps and the ceremony of each movement. As Myelic sung in ritual, she wrapped her lady in four layers of rippling robes, all of them of different color, all of them winding around one another like a tropical bird’s extravagant mating display. She was burdened with golden clasps and clinking jewelry, with rings of jagged silver and twinkling rubies, and with a black headdress that had an opening at the top, allowing her hair to fan upwards in feathers of gold. Her ears were draped with long tassels that flowed over her breasts, and each tassel was tipped by a bird’s skull.
When Myelic finished her singing, Thessa assumed the Face of Mahl, fastening the black menacing facemask to her own head while Myelic double-checked to ensure the clasps were secure.
Thessa reached out to Myelic, and they held hands a moment. “Pray with me,” she said.
She and Myelic bowed their heads. Prayer before a meeting with the others was crucial, and Mahl must know of Thessa’s subservience to him. When they were finished, Myelic knelt and kissed her lady’s hands.
The last thing they did before stepping out into the hallway was to fasten her with a sash that looked ceremonial, but in fact had a utilitarian function. A hidden switch within activated the invisible plasma field around her. Protection against bullets and energy weapons. It was an essential piece of her wardrobe, never to be forgotten.
After all, Thessa could never be too careful when meeting with her daughters.
A CADRE OF honor guards were waiting outside for her. Five naked men, their bodies at the pinnacle of male physique, walked ahead of her with sharpened spears pointed outward, an open challenge to any who would do the High Priestess harm. Of course, no one could see them, for they walked the halls in darkness, all lights switched off, all torches doused. It had to be this way, for Mahl commanded the night, and his greatest priestess must walk the night with him.
Like her honor guards, Thessa walked the corridor by memory, counting the steps and then turning at each juncture. They progressed down the dark stairs silently, finally coming to a corridor lit only by one torch. They stepped through a doorway, and into the Hall of Assembly, where all twenty-three of her daughters sat around a long, crescent-shaped compristeel table. The room was lit by candles dangling from chandeliers, which cast flickering and malevolent shadows across her daughters’ faces.
One of her honor guards called, “All rise for Thessa Zane den Uta, High Priestess of Mahl, Prophet of Phanes, Venerator of the Void, Arch-sorceress Supreme of the Faith, Arch-duchess of Vastill, Scrivener of Souls, Wardeness of Widden, and Governor of Phanes! All rise and venerate!”
They stood to receive her, each of their gowns chittering with waves of rippling gold, chased silver bracelets, glittering diamonds, and anklets of iron. Thessa’s eldest, the First Traitor, stood at the head of the table, while her sisters were arranged down the table in descending order of age.
In the corner of the room stood the Order Guard. The uk’tek, whose alien religion Thessa’s ancestors had usurped, stood sentry with sharp-bladed glaives in each of their four hands. Their large bodies were black and comma-shaped, their faces long and fanged, and their humanoid upper bodies terminated at the midsection in two enormous serpentine tails. Tendrils of green nakkta rippled off their backs like seaweed in a soft current, and the two tails, which they used to slither across the floor, were coiled around them, ready to spring should anyone attack the High Priestess.
There was a high-backed chair that stood at the middle of the room. The honor guards took up a flanking position on either side of the Seat of the High Priestess as she lowered herself with grace and precision onto its cushion.
All her daughters were forced to bow, and she knew that it ate at them. It had to. For they each had been made to understand the Faith of Mahl, and Mahl only understood death, degradation, and deception. He was not a kind god. He was cruel and only wished to view the pitiful dance of the living universe through the machinations of his daughters. This alone gave him worship, this alone was the monument to his memory.
“Be seated,” Thessa said, waving a hand burdened by rings sharp as fangs.
Her daughters did as they were bidden, glowering at her. Their menace was enhanced by the deep shadows in the room. They held their suspicion of her, and of each other, close to their breasts. She was so proud of them.
As she spoke, her voice came through an amplifier in the mask. This was key, for it underscored that she spoke with Mahl’s voice.
“We are at a critical point in our history and now is our greatest test,” Thessa said. Her words hung in the air a moment, echoing off the shimmering compristeel walls. “We find ourselves under attack from a machine cult, and for the first time ever we have extended our hand to the Imperator for help.
“Unfortunately for us, the Imperator is missing and presumed dead. The Senate acts in his stead, but it has fallen into dysfunction. The Fall of Man continues throughout the galaxy, as we all knew it would, for Mahl has told us.”
“Mahl has told us,” her twenty-three daughters intoned simultaneously.
“Desht’hoa Mahl fre’dish fuun,” intoned the Order Guard in their guttural alien tongue.
“But it also pleases him that we struggle on, even in vain, for deception is Mahl’s way and this machine cult will learn of it. I have seen it in the fires. Mahl has told us.”
“Mahl has told us,” they intoned again.
“Desht’hoa Mahl fre’dish fuun,” said the Order Guard.
“However, the Fall of Man has escalated to such a degree that we will not be getting the full backing of the Republican Navy, merely a single fleet, and even it is incomplete and failing. They come even now. We must be cautious that these people do not see Widden as weak, for our lush world would attract many speculators, industrialists, and in time it would become a disgusting, overpopulated heap, just like all the others. Man may fall, but it will not take us with it so easily. Our way is one of struggle and deception. Mahl has told us.”
“Mahl has told us,” they said.
“Desht’hoa Mahl fre’dish fuun.”
Thessa looked at each of them in turn, reevaluating them, just as she was forced to do every time she saw them. Who knew what plots they had begun to weave since the last time she saw them? She had seen some of them only five or six times since they left the incubator. Who knew how they might have been corrupted by their fathers or second-mothers?
Hopefully they have been thoroughly corrupted. Anything less is unacceptable.
“Through Mahl’s wisdom have we endured. My father and his forebears wrought this planet, forged it from a rocky swampland and made it what it is today. He did so by turning his back on the Republic, on the Technocracy, on all the Aligned Worlds. Through deception and a close adherence to Mahl’s ways did he make this planet what it is.” She shook her head. “It will not fall into the hands of the Ascendancy, nor will I let it fall into the hands of the Republic.
