She had noticed the second human warrior approaching, of course, but was unconcerned: two of them would pose a more interesting contest, especially since the second human had drawn a knife. Tesh-Dar had no intention of drawing a weapon other than those her body possessed, but she might consider indulging herself in the use of her talons. Her warriors did not interfere, for they knew that two humans, a dozen, could not harm a priestess of the Desh-Ka.
After blocking a blow to her face by the human male, she was just preparing to make a counter-strike when there was a terrible surge in the Bloodsong, one of pain and fear from a dozen among the billions of spiritual melodies.
“Li’ara-Zhurah,” she gasped, feeling as though a bolt of lightning had pierced her heart. She staggered with shock, nearly falling to her knees. The human warrior wasted no time, throwing himself upon her, but she brutally shoved him away.
Then she was seared by white hot pain as the second human warrior, about whom she had completely forgotten as she considered Li’ara-Zhurah’s plight, plunged her knife into Tesh-Dar’s back, just below her armored backplate.
* * *
“Emmanuelle,” Mills shouted, “no!”
It was too late. He had seen her rush from the cover of the downed cutter toward him, but had been unable to wave her back as he staggered back to his feet after the Kreelan had knocked him to the ground. And now, just as the enemy warrior mysteriously stumbled, temporarily losing her focus on the fight, Sabourin had dashed forward the last few meters, her combat knife held at the ready.
Mills threw himself at the warrior, trying to hold her and keep her from turning on Sabourin. Even as addled as she clearly was, however, she was still far too strong for him. With an angry growl, she flung him half a dozen meters across the tarmac, where he landed hard, breaking his right arm and scraping his face on the rough concrete. “Emmanuelle,” he cried desperately. “Get back!”
* * *
The Messenger’s ship suddenly exploded around them, the force flinging warriors and humans alike across the bridge as the hull was torn apart. The lights flickered, then went out, plunging the command deck into total darkness. The artificial gravity failed, leaving the living and the dead flying through the compartment like ricocheting bullets before they were sucked into the screaming torrent of the ship’s air as it vented into space through the shattered hull.
Sato flailed his arms and legs, trying desperately to find something to cling to as he was sucked toward the bridge hatchway, but in the total and utter darkness it was impossible. His lungs felt like they were about to burst, and he forced himself to exhale to relieve the pressure. It wouldn’t matter in another few moments, he knew, but that is what he had been trained to do, and that is what he did.
His leg slammed into something hard, making him gasp with pain, his lungs venting what little air they had left. For just an instant while he tumbled, he could see down the passageway from the bridge: ten meters down the passageway, Yura’s hull was simply gone. There was nothing left of the rest of the ship, and he could see the stars whirling outside as the chunk of her that he was on spun out of control.
Steph, he thought. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I won’t be coming home...
A clawed hand suddenly grabbed his arm like a vice, and he felt himself being pulled against the quickly subsiding rush of air. Before he could react, he was forcibly stuffed head-first into something that felt like a bag made of metallic cloth. He struggled, his lungs totally out of oxygen now, but the owner of the clawed hands had both strength and leverage. The Kreelan, whichever it was, finished cramming his body in and sealed his malleable sarcophagus shut.
* * *
Li’ara-Zhurah was in agony. Her punctured lung had collapsed and one of her legs had shattered when she had been flung across the compartment when the ship’s aft section exploded. She realized that more human ships must have come, and had fired on her abandoned ship, not realizing that it was tied up to one of their own.
Yet in defeat, she could still find victory. Even though her warriors had perished, sucked into the vacuum of space, the Empress had graced her one last time, for she had found a spot to anchor herself near the hatch leading from the command compartment. As the air howled into space, taking everything in the compartment with it that was not locked down, the human ship had automatically released what she knew must be survival devices, cloth-like bags that probably had emergency air supplies and more inside them. Even without the ship’s lighting, she could see quite well by the starlight that entered the compartment from the torn hull behind them. She had snatched one of the survival devices as it sailed past her, careful not to puncture the device with her talons. Holding it between her thighs, ignoring the pain in her broken leg, she pulled the Messenger from the airflow as he passed her. She had to wait a moment until the air was nearly gone before she could stuff his struggling body into the safety device, hoping it was smart enough to function automatically.
With one final effort, she forced his feet through the opening in the bag, then sealed the flap shut behind him.
* * *
It’s a beach ball, Sato thought. I’m in a beach ball. They were life preservers in space, cheap but effective devices that were stored in every compartment of the ship in case the hull was breached. While they had a long-winded official designation, the spherical survival bags were traditionally called “beach balls” because of their shape.
As soon as the Kreelan sealed him in, a small tank filled the beach ball with life-giving air, its shape snapping from a formless bag into a tight sphere. An emergency beacon began to transmit, and a set of small lights came on, providing him with gentle illumination of the ball’s interior, along with bright lights on the exterior to help rescuers see it. A section of the ball was transparent, allowing him to see out.
And there, in the beach ball’s external lights, was the face of the warrior, looking in at him. She placed a hand against the transparency, and he raised his hand to meet hers.
“Why?” he asked. “Why me?”
But there was no answer. She took her hand away and reached around the back of her neck, releasing her collar. She attached it to one of the handholds on the outside of the beach ball, and with one final look at him, she let him go.
* * *
The living metal of Li’ara-Zhurah’s collar would normally never have unclasped until she was dead, but the collar knew in its own way that she had reached the end of her Way in this life; all that remained was for the spirits of her and her unborn child to leave the dying vessel that had carried them. She watched as the ship’s last remaining breath of air carried the Messenger into space.
May thy way be long and glorious, she thought one last time before closing her eyes.
Willing her body to relax, she focused on the Bloodsong of her child, calming it. For even the unborn had a place in the Afterlife, and together the two of them crossed the infinite bridge from the darkness to the light.
* * *
Tesh-Dar shuddered, then fell to her knees as she felt Li’ara-Zhurah and her unborn child pass on to join the Ancient Ones.
“No,” she whispered, her eyes wide with pain and disbelief. “No!” A warrior’s death in battle was something in which her people normally rejoiced, for that was their Way. A part of her understood this, but only a part. The rest of her was overcome with anguish so great that it sent a shock wave through the river of souls that sang the infinite melody of the Bloodsong, echoing her pain throughout the Empire. The young warrior she had come to love like a daughter was gone, along with her unborn child. The child that Tesh-Dar had looked forward to training after she had passed on the honor of the Desh-Ka to Li’ara-Zhurah, in a time that would leave behind the crushing responsibilities of being who and what she was now.
Her mind stared into the future, realizing that it was now empty, her entire existence pointless. She was far older than all but one other among her race, and she knew that Death would come for her, if not today, then soon. It
must. And she would have no successor, no legacy. All that she had accomplished, all for which she had suffered, had been for nothing. “My Empress,” she whispered in prayer, “please let it not be so.”
And yet it was. For even the Empress, with all Her powers, could not bring the dead back to life. Only Keel-Tath, the First Empress, had such power in the times of legend, but She had been lost to Her people for a hundred millenia.
Tesh-Dar, Legend of the Sword and greatest warrior of the Empire, knelt on the field of battle, her heart broken by Fate.
* * *
The warrior suddenly fell to her knees as if she had been struck a great blow, and stayed there, gasping and clearly in distress.
Sabourin wasted no time. Rushing up behind the warrior, she put the force of her own body behind her attack, plunging her knife up to the handle into the Kreelan’s back, just beneath her armor near where a human’s kidney might be. The warrior made no reaction at all, as if she had not even noticed.
Furious, Sabourin yanked out the knife, covered now with alien blood, deftly changed to an overhand grip, and plunged the blade through the gap at the top of her chest armor, deep into the Kreelan’s flesh where her shoulder met her neck.
As if suddenly coming to life again, the Kreelan roared in pain and rage. She grabbed Sabourin’s hand, still clinging to the handle of her knife, and yanked her over her shoulder so hard that Sabourin’s arm popped out of its socket. The alien stood fully upright now, holding Sabourin in the air, gasping in pain, their faces mere centimeters apart.
Sabourin spat in the alien’s face. “Nique ta mere!” she shouted defiantly as she slammed her free fist into the warrior’s mouth, then brought a foot up and slammed it into the alien’s stomach.
Having managed to get back on his feet, Mills watched helplessly as the huge warrior plunged her free hand into Sabourin’s chest, right through her armor and ribs, and ripped out her heart.
* * *
Tesh-Dar let the dead human’s body slip from her grip to fall to the ground. Then she crushed the creature’s still-beating heart in her fist before flinging it away. The other warrior, the large male, made to charge at her, but he was tackled to the ground by yet another human.
She ignored them, ignored the warriors who stared at her in shocked disbelief as they felt the depth and intensity of her loss. Ignored the pain from her wounds and the blood that poured from them. She simply stood there, the torn body of the human at her feet, feeling nothing, caring for nothing.
In the Bloodsong, she felt the empathy of the Empress pour into the great river as if a dam had broken, but it washed against Tesh-Dar as a wave might break against a mountain. She sensed it, yet she was not moved by it. She could have blamed the Empress for not saving Li’ara-Zhurah, for certainly that might have been within Her power, but that was not their Way, nor was it entirely true: Li’ara-Zhurah had given herself for a higher purpose, bringing great glory to the Empress and Her Children through her sacrifice. Had it been any other warrior in the Empire, Tesh-Dar’s heart would now be singing praise and joy at such a feat as saving not just a Messenger, but a Messenger-warrior, a thing never documented in all the Books of Time.
But there was no joy to be found in Tesh-Dar’s heart now, and part of her wondered if there ever would be again.
Instead, she felt the stirrings of a primal rage at Fate, at the humans, at the Universe around her.
* * *
“No, Mills!” Grishin shouted as the Mauritania’s engines roared to life. “She’s gone!”
Mills struggled against his commander, determined to get to Sabourin’s lifeless body. “I’m not going to leave her!”
“If you do not, her sacrifice was for nothing,” Grishin yelled at him. “Nothing!”
“Emmanuelle!” Mills cried, reaching for her even as he realized that Grishin had spoken the truth. She had bought him his life, paying for it with her own. “I love you,” he whispered as he let Grishin help him to the ship.
The Kreelans made no move to stop them as two other Marines ran down and carried Mills up the massive loading ramp, which slowly closed behind them.
“We’ve only got one little problem,” Faraday said as Grishin made it to the flight deck. “This tub doesn’t have any armor. If those Kreelans fire at us...”
“They will soon have other things to worry about,” the colonel told him, fighting to keep the emotional exhaustion out of his voice. “There is a Saint Petersburg combat regiment coming right toward them.” He had seen a stream of armored vehicles and personnel carriers pour through the spaceport entrance and head across the massive landing field while Mills was sparring with the alien. He suspected the troops had originally been sent to kill him and his Marines. Even that fool Korolev must have realized by now that the invaders were not human, he thought. In any case, it did not matter: either the Mauritania would make her way to safety, or she would not. Grishin was almost too tired to care anymore which it would be.
He looked at Valentina, then quickly looked away. He had seen enough death for one day, and there was certainly nothing to be gained by looking at the inhumanly empty expression she wore.
“Here we go,” Faraday muttered tensely as he manipulated the controls, ordering Mauritania to lift off, the commands mysteriously translated by Valentina’s human-machine interface.
The ship rumbled and shook, then slowly began to lift. A cheer went up from the hundreds of exhausted Marines on the passenger deck and in the cargo hold as they heard the whine of the ship’s landing gear cycle into flight mode.
As Mauritania took flight, Grishin caught a last glimpse of the huge alien warrior, standing still as a statue over Sabourin’s body even as the approaching Russian troops opened fire on her and the other warriors.
Then they were gone as Faraday flew away from Saint Petersburg toward the surrounding forests, trying to get away from any Kreelan ground defenses before they made their climb toward the relative safety of space.
* * *
Tesh-Dar was not sure how long she had been standing there. It was as if she had fallen into the deepest level of meditation that she had been taught to achieve in the many cycles she had spent at the Desh-Ka temple, cycles that had passed in but a few hours of time to the rest of the Empire.
She knew that her injuries were severe, and that she should seek the attention of a healer, but she no longer cared. She felt nothing, save a cold fire that had taken root in her now-empty soul.
As if in a dream, she saw the warriors around her fighting, firing their weapons at the enemy. At humans. She could sense the bullets the humans fired streaking past her, others striking her armor and flesh. Some had actually hit her, for the power that let her walk through solid objects and let other objects pass through her was a conscious one. She glanced down at her feet, her gaze passing over the human warrior she had killed, to see a pool of blood, her own, spreading at her feet.
The humans, she suddenly seethed. Within her, a power began to build, one that she had never had cause to use. Until now.
Fully aware now, using the powers she had inherited and trained to use over many long cycles, she turned toward the humans. She saw that many of her warriors were dead, others wounded, as the humans fired their primitive rifles and larger weapons from their war machines. One of the latter had its massive cannon aimed directly at Tesh-Dar. Firing with a great gout of flame and smoke, she instantly slowed the flow of time, examining the dart-like projectile that was pointed at her. Letting time begin to flow again, but slowly, she waited until the projectile was just in front of her before she batted it away as if it were an offending insect. Then she let time speed up to its normal rate, and watched with satisfaction as a number of the humans gaped at what she had just done.
“You have seen nothing yet, animals,” she snarled to herself.
The humans began to focus more of their fire on her, and she let the projectiles pass through her. Inside, she felt the surge of power begin to peak, a wave of heat rushing th
rough her body, her soul, like the core of a long-dormant volcano about to erupt.
All around her, the surviving warriors threw themselves to the ground. They did not know what was about to happen, but they could feel Tesh-Dar’s power in the Bloodsong rising higher, a tide the power of which none had ever felt since the time of Sura-Ni’khan, Tesh-Dar’s predecessor as high priestess of the Desh-Ka.
Tesh-Dar spread her arms wide, fists closed, and opened her soul and her body to the energy that eagerly sought release. Had anyone been close enough, they would have seen electric sparks dancing in her cold eyes. At last judging the moment to be right, she opened her hands, her palms facing the enemy.
The warriors around her cried out in fear and shock as bolts of lightning suddenly exploded from Tesh-Dar’s hands, accompanied by a deafening barrage of thunder. Hotter than the surface of a star, the bolts lanced through the humans and their machines, melting, burning, and vaporizing all that they touched. The electric storm danced along the human line, blasting the animals to cinders, leaving nothing behind of the individual warriors but ash and black scars on the landing field. As the bolts touched the war machines, the metal turned white hot and began to flow, baking alive the creatures within who were not already dead from electric shock.
The humans stopped firing at her and tried to flee, but none would escape her wrath. There were nearly a thousand of them that had come to die here, and she disappointed none of them. By the tens, then the hundreds did she kill them. All of them. Using her second sight, she knew that there were other humans on the landing field, some in the ships, some in the buildings near the ships, and others caught out in the open, running between the two.
Her own warriors fled from the field as her lightning struck the ships containing humans, the electrical surge electrocuting those who were not insulated from the hull. Some yet survived, but not for long: her rage now a rampaging beast in her soul, she poured electrical fire into the ships around her, probing to their power cores, overloading them. One by one they blew up, exploding in tremendous fireballs that could be seen by Her warships in orbit. Their fire and debris washed over her, passed through her, and she let the winds of the storm she created lift her from the ground and carry her toward the large human city nearby. She did not need wings to fly, for she could control the fall of her body above the ground, another of the powers she had inherited. As the roiling clouds from the explosions carried her higher and higher, she looked out over the human domain, her second sight sensing the thousands, millions of souls below.
In Her Name: The Last War Page 78
