by Yronwode
“It’s a powerful weapon,” Bang agreed. “A Kariad weapon. And we have more weapons, from your ship. Even now, our best weapon engineers…” Keeler/K-Rock ignored her, too busy squinting at the black bottle the men had handed him. “I guess it’s time to test the local rotgut.”
“Not that,” Bang said, snatching the bottle away. “This,” she handed him a different bottle.
Keeler/K-Rock took a long swig. There was a burning taste of alcohol in it, but the rest tasted like mud, blood, and battery acid. He grimaced, “Oh, man…”
“The Izzan Phalange is only one of many,” Bang whispered to him. “You will need to unite the Phalanges if you are to succeed in destroying the Theocrats. But, we will see Xenthe and Xiyyon burn!”
“I have a more pressing concern,” Keeler/K-Rock told her. “I am guessing from my surroundings that a sonic anus cleaner is out of the question. So, I need to ask, what the acceptable substitute is?” Figuring she would not know the use of a sonic anus cleaner, he mimed its application.
“We use a rag,” she answered.
“Please tell me you don’t all use the same rag.”
Keeler/K-Rock remained inside the squalid tunnel no longer than he had to.
Spurning the offer to have Boros’s women and children murdered so that he could take over his house, Keeler/K-Rock was instead offered a suite of rooms in the Izzan-al-Izzan Central Administration Complex, where he could stay until he found a place to his liking. There was a bunker, there, where he would be safe in the event of a Theocrat attack,
The Theocrats were not what K-Rock was worried about. He was taken to the complex in the lead vehicle of a convoy of old battered motor vehicles flanked on either side by guards on motorcycles. Bang rode with him, in the back, whispering in his ear the whole time as he drank the vile Xirong liquor. By the time they arrived at the complex, his shoulder was moist with her spittle.
In the street outside the complex, a small crowd had gathered on the fast-spreading rumor that a new Chieftain had taken power. When Keeler/K-Rock emerged from his car, still clad in the black jumpsuit of his escape pod, but now sporting a cap and mantle of heavy black and purple crushed velvet, the crowd knew he was their new chieftain, and silently awaited his word.
“What’s gonna to be K-Rock’s first new order?” asked Blunt Hardcheese, throwing a salute that consisted of thumping his chest with his fist then thrusting the fist into the air. He was the second largest of the remaining guard, and he had a star-shaped scar above his right eye. Other than that, he looked like most of the other Xirong guards.
“First order, I don’t know,” Keeler/K-Rock searched through his head. “First order, let’s get this place cleaned up. Let’s get some garbage details organized…”
“No!” Bang interrupted. “The word is conquest! We have to destroy the Theocratic Entity.”
“There will be plenty of time for that after we clean up this hellhole,” Keeler/K-Rock protested.
“He talks like a Theocrat!” Keeler/K-Rock heard some murmur in the crowd, but he focused on Hardcheese.
“Cleaning up garbage is not a worthy task for a man like you!” Bang shouted at him.
“I never said I’d be doing it personally,” Keeler/K-Rock protested.
Bang reiterated firmly. “You must lead the people to conquest.” Keeler/K-Rock was silent for a long moment.
“The people demand the word of their Chieftain,” Hardcheese told him.
Keeler/K-Rock scowled, and then an idea came to him, a wonderful, awful idea.
He spoke loudly so that the thirty or forty Izzan civilians could hear also. “You are asking yourselves, is this guy truly your new Chieftain and your new leader? Has he come down from the stars to lead you? Those are damn good questions. Don’t look to me for answers. Look to the skies this night and the next and the next. For a sign is coming unto you. You will surely see a sign that the Kariad have returned to … finish the job, and that I, K-Rock, will lead you to crush the bones of our enemies into chunky salsa.” He lifted a hand toward the blank black sky. “When you see the sign, you will know I am who I am. And that I will lead you to greatness and destroy the Theocratic Entity!”
He had expected cheers, but was met with only curious stares. He cleared his throat and continued. “And if there is no sign, I will walk out into the desert, alone, and none will ever see me again.”
And by the time they figure out there is no sign, I’ll be long gone, Keeler thought.
He didn’t know how or where he would find rescue, but he sure as hell wasn’t sticking around with these murderous nutjobs.
CHAPTER: 09
Security Base One – Medical Facility
“I need to see him,” David Alkema again tried to push his way past the stern nurse impeding his progress through the gray and green corridors of the Base Medical Center.
“No one will see the survivor until he is cleared by a physician,” the nurse fixed Alkema with the kind of stare that would have deterred a wolf from a wounded moose.
“He has a name,” Alkema told her once again. “It’s Blade. And I need to see him.” A day after Toto had been taken into the facility, General Parka had finally managed to clear Alkema to visit the medical center, which had been opposed by the Military Health Board for fear that Alkema and the rest might carry some biological contagion. Common sense and compassion had eventually prevailed, but apparently, the mean nurse had not been informed. She had had Alkema removed by security.
That had been the day before. Today, he had returned to the base hospital again with a signed copy of his permission papers from the Military Health Board, but the mean nurse remained unbudged.
“No one will see the survivor until he is cleared by a physician,” the mean nurse repeated. For the first time in his life, Alkema wanted to shoot someone.
“Maybe I should speak to his physician, then,” Alkema challenged her.
“I can not interrupt a physician during her rounds,” insisted the mean nurse.
“So, she is here,” Alkema tried to stare her down, not too effectively. “Page her.”
“I can not interrupt a physician during her rounds,” insisted the mean nurse.
“Who is his physician?” Alkema asked.
“I can not tell you that.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Alkema seethed. Some Sapphireans had developed one of the “higher gifts” of mental domination, an extension of telepathy that enabled the one with the gift to bend weaker individuals to their will; for example, to make a mean nurse get out of the way. Alkema, unfortunately, lacked this gift, or at least lacked it in sufficient strength to push his way past the nurse. So, he solved the problem the Republicker way; he called the hospital administrator and demanded be let in.
Five minutes later, he was standing at Blade Toto’s bedside with his attending physician and two rather stringy hospital guards, who waited outside the door. The room was dim, heavy curtains dimming the day’s light into a kind of beige twilight.
There was a single bed in the room, occupied by a single man, unrecognizably swathed in bandages. “The pilot is not doing well,” the physician, Benicia Goode told David Alkema. “It’s doubtful he will ever wake up.”
Blade Toto lay motionless, swathed in cloth and plastic, with tubes and wires connecting him to an array of instruments. After he had been airlifted here, he had been taken into a room where surgeons cut into his body with lasers and knives, and sewed him together with stitches and glue.
“Our surgeons have done everything they could do,” Goode went on, apologetically. “But his injuries were severe, and two days in the open wild left him dehydrated and near-dead. We had to recalibrate our instruments to your race’s vital signs. Your heart rate is only about a third of ours and your body temperature… what in the name of Brian are you doing?”
Alkema had taken Toto’s hand and was concentrating. Immediately, the instruments monitoring the young pilot lit up as his vitals surged.
“Take your hands o
ff him!” the Physician ordered.
“If you know a better way of tranfusing charged protein strands, I’d like to hear it,” Alkema said through clenched teeth, trying not to break his concentration. “I don’t have a strong healing gift, but I can give him what I have.” Alkema would have to explain later that none of the civilizations they had so far encountered had developed the healing gift or the telepathy gift, and that his people had the capability of transferring life force to another, to help them heal when they were sick or injured. Those with the strongest gift become physicians and healers, but most Sapphireans and Republickers possessed at least some ability.
But Good had no time for explanations. “You’re going to kill him.”
“Neg, I’m… going… to … save… him…” Alkema insisted. Goode was about to order security to pull him off, but just then, Blade Toto’s eyes fluttered open.
“Blade…?” Alkema whispered.
“Yeah,” Blade Toto answered hoarsely.
“Are you all right?” Alkema asked him, as Dr. Goode stood by, stunned.
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you going to be all right later?”
“Probably,” Toto drawled slowly. “This doesn’t look like one of Pegasus’s hospitals.”
“It isn’t,” Alkema told him. “You’re in a Medical Facility on the planet Yronwode.”
“Za, I kind of figured. Thanks for the life force energy,” Toto told Alkema weakly.
“Is it true when you get a life force transfusion, you start acting like the person you got it from.”
“Za, You may feel a strong urge to marry a high-maintenance princess and have a lot of kids,” Alkema responded flatly. “But that’s not important right now. Do you remember what happened to the commander?”
“The wha…?” Toto croaked out. The electro-mechnical devices attached to his chest began to chirp and click. The physician looked concerned. “Heart rate increasing, blood pressure falling.”
“Stay with me, Toto,” Alkema insisted, still grasping his hand. “Where is the Commander?”
“Escape pods,” Toto stammered. “Commander Keeler ejected before we hit.”
“We found one of the pods,” but now at least they could confirm that Keeler had been in a pod. “Do you remember where the other pod was ejected?”
“It should be in Zilla’s logs,” Toto said.
“We tried recovering the coordinates from the logs, but they were damaged,” Alkema told him.
Toto whispered something that Alkema didn’t catch. His vital signs stabilized again. Alkema took his hand away. Sometimes, the charged protein transfer could overcharge a weakened system.
“What did you say?” Alkema asked him a few minutes later, when Toto seemed more stable.
Toto was clearly in a lot of pain, but he spoke anyway. “When we were attacked, the plasma charges scrambled my systems. They both ejected, but the coordinate logs must have been fried up. I thought I could bring the ship down, but then I lost my wingblade, and I thought, ‘Oh, hell,’ but somehow I brought her down.”
“He needs to rest,” Good intervened gently. “I don’t think he can tell you any more.”
“Probably not,” Alkema reluctantly agreed. He took Toto’s hand again. “Heal yourself, when you’re feeling better, we’ll get the rest of the men in here to visit you.”
“When can I go back to Pegasus? ” Toto asked.
The question fell on Alkema like a 60 ton weight. “When you’re better,” was the best answer he could offer.
Toto’s eyes focused somewhat more, and rested on Dr. Goode, a reasonably attractive woman about ten years his senior. “Hey, my name’s Blade. What’s yours?” Yronwode – Xiyyon - Emissarial Complex of the Starcross That afternoon, Eddie Roebuck a sumptuous lunch with the four Archonexes (North, West, East, and South) of the Starcross who comprised the Parliament. The Archonexes of the East and the West were women of a certain age. The other Archonexes were males. One was his friend Meek. They all wore elaborate hats.
“Are you planning on serving any food that isn’t deep-fried?” whined the Archonex of the East upon seeing the table.
“You can just drink the fortified wine if you want,” Eddie Roebuck told her. “More for me, anyway.”
There was an air of disbelief among the Archonexs that Eddie was to become the Figurehead of their church, except for Archonex Meek (technically, Archonex of the North), who was most calm of it all. The Archonex of the West asked, “I pray thee, sir.
What course do you intend to set for our wonderful church.”
“There will be major changes,” Eddie promised them.
“Could you give an example,” asked the Archonex of the West.
Eddie shrugged. “I’m still working on the details, but for one, I think my idea for Family Poker Night on Fridays will, um, make the church better. Oh, and I have my man Meek working out some new hymns. How’s that new hymn coming,” Eddie asked Meek.
“It is still… very rough, holiness,” Meek answered.
“Sing a few bars anyway,” Eddie insisted. “I demand it!” Meek cleared his throat and began to sing in a decent, slightly wavering voice: Grexx Grebulon, Grexxx Grebulon
Our Most Holy Pontifex Grexxx Grebulon
He robbed from the rich, And he gave to the poor Stood up to the Xirong, And he gave him what for Our love for him now, is not at all complex
The Hero of Yronwode, the Pontifex Grexxx
Grexxx saw the mothers and daughters,
The fathers and sons of Midian
He saw that his nation needed the light of salvation, So, he lit himself bright and he burned through the night With the power of the Allbeing’s might.
And here is the Best part, what makes him so great, He heals our pain, he lifts us up high,
He’s going to set us up with the spirit in the sky, He puts the ex in Pontifex, the Pontifex Grexxx
The Archonexes looked uncomfortable, which pleased Eddie. “Perhaps it would be better not to go too far, too quickly,” the Archonex of the West cautioned.
“There were many who thought the Prophet Brian Kingman went too far when he added a cheese course to that sacrament service,” Archonex Meek pointed out.
“And yet we now accept it as doctrine.”
“I was thinking of maybe adding a light sorbet,” Eddie mused. He turned to the Archonex of the South. “Can I wear your hat?”
The Archonex was not amused. “No!”
“But I’m the Pontifex, and I am infallible,” Eddie insisted.
“You are not yet the Pontifex,” the Archonex of the North seethed through gritted teeth.
“When I am, I’m coming back for that hat,” Eddie insisted.
There was uncomfortable silence for a time. Finally, the Archonex of the East spoke. “I was made to understand Most Holy Solace No. 23 would be in attendance with us.”
Archonex Meek, explained. “Her Serenity sends her regrets, but she feels her time drawing near, and is Communion with those beyond the Veil.”
“I am sure my brothers and sisters will join me in prayers that she enjoy health and long-life for many years to come,” the Archonex of the East said acidly.
Eddie slammed his goblet down on the table. “I never wanted to be pontifex, You chose me. Let me repeat. You. Chose. Me. So, you better learn to live with that choice, or let me go.”
He stood up from the table, “And even though I still don’t want to be pontifex, I look forward to the day I am, so I can have the pleasure of looking at your pompous asses while you bend over and kiss my toes. And I’m gonna make sure you stick your tongue in between them and get it going real good!”
He grabbed a plate of fried bird parts and stalked out. “If anybody wants me, I’ll be in my chambers seeing if there’s anything good on the telereceiver.” Yronwode – Xenthe
Johnny Rook and Max Jordan had fallen into a routine of flying out the crash site
– where they either helped the Midian troops load
up pieces of Zilla or conducted fruitless searches for the captain and the other guy – and then flew back to the base barracks, where there was not much to do but eat, sleep, and hang out with the rest of the ground crew, who were even more bored than they were since none of them were but the warfighters were even allowed to get out into the desert.
The Midians were keen on keeping the crews isolated from the general populace and, especially, from their broadcast media. The Information Ward had put a blackout order on all stories related to the arrival of the Pegasans .
Four days into the routine, though, General Parka arranged a break for them and the rest of the crew, and they were allowed passage to the city of Xenthe, under the eyes of military “watchers.” A caravan of military transport vehicles took them into town, and they were let off in an area called ‘The Corniche,’ which their military guide described as a café district.
As the sun set in the east and the city began to cool under a starless sky, Rook and Jordan ventured forth to sample the city’s nightlife. They had shed most of their tactical gear, and wore unmarked Midian military jackets over their landing suits, making them only a little less than conspicuous.
They ditched their watched within ten minutes of arriving and somehow ended up in a bar not too far from their drop-off point, a place not much larger than an officer’s suite on Pegasus, located in the basement beneath a restaurant that was itself on the bottom floor of an office block. Here, Johnny Rook was trying to explain the rules of air hockey to an attractive brunette female and a buxon blonde female he had spotted at the far end of a market square and charmed into joining them at the drink bar.
“You have an oblong field 100 meters long with two goals, one at each end.
Then, you have two teams of five men, and they’re wearing anti-grav harnesses and jet packs. Oh, the field is ten meters off the ground. I forgot to tell you that. So, you have six guys: a guardian; two flankers; two bashers; and a wing commander, and they all have fire-sticks… So, you have these two teams, and they’re all wearing anti-gravity pods and jet packs, and they try to get the lozenge through one of the goals at either end of the field. That’s air hockey,” Rook explained.
