Salvage Conquest

by Chris Kennedy

  “Not ‘they’ Councilman,” Jazlin said coldly, also slowly climbing to her feet, while she dried her eyes. “The Overlord, remember? He made up his mind before any of us could get a word in edgewise. Decreed it on the spot.”

  “Maybe anticipating we’d fight no matter what, once we got out here,” the Flamediver’s captain said, looking pale and disturbed.

  “And be destroyed,” Taga said, finishing the captain’s thought for him. “Or if you didn’t fight, you’d parley with us. And maybe learn the truth. And now, one thing’s for certain. None of you can ever go back to the Colonies again. If you do, they will blast Flamediver out of space before any of you can so much as get a secure communications signal.”

  Councilman Nyfid felt suddenly ill. He staggered to the brig sink in the cell’s corner and gagged repeatedly over the basin. Then ran the water until all his bile had been washed away. Then he rejoined the others. Who were already engaged in an animated conversation with Heir Taga.

  “. . . What do we do about it now?”

  “. . . Who else on the Council knows?”

  “. . . Overlord Vo passing control outside the family?”

  “. . . Nobody in the fleet will believe it!”

  “. . . But fleet has to be warned!”

  Nyfid wave his arms, motioning for all of them to be quiet.

  “Assuming it’s true that Mieetal Outpost was a Council Security black operation, and also assuming we three were intended to perish on our mission to retrieve you, Heir Taga, what is the Salvage System connection?”

  For the first time, the corners of Heir Taga’s mouth bent upward in a slight grin.

  “That’s the part none of us expected, Councilman. Not me. Not my command. And certainly not my dear uncle, nor anyone on the Council Security staff. Salvage System could be what tears the Uldarra Colonies apart…and puts us back together again, stronger than before.”

  Councilman Nyfid and Councilwoman Jazlin exchanged glances.

  “We need to talk,” Nyfid said unironically. “But can we please not do it here?”

  He motioned to the walls of the cell and pointed to the guards waiting outside the open cell door.

  Heir Taga’s eyes evaluated the prisoners. Nyfid couldn’t read minds, but he was a professional at reading facial and body language. Taga didn’t trust them. Not yet. If what she said had happened at Salvage System was true, Nyfid could not blame her. Taga’s personality profile had been that of a true-blue patriot. Someone who cared nothing for politics, but simply wanted to serve and protect her people. As an Heir, she had leveraged her heritage proudly for the sake of the nation and accrued an admirable officer’s record. Only to have that very nation—the people at the top—try to put a knife in her back.

  Heir Taga would remember that betrayal for the rest of her life. It would never heal completely. No wound like that ever did. Not with people like Taga. People who weren’t political thinkers in the way Nyfid, himself, was. He was used to the game. He knew that bargains made and promises kept would only last so long as the parties involved felt it directly beneficial. The small infidelities of the Council’s wheelings and dealings were just part of the job. His father had gotten used to it. And instructed his son—Nyfid—to do the same. Nothing personal. Right? Just business.

  But people like Taga—and her brother, for that matter—they lived in a different emotional space. They would not have liked, nor understood, Nyfid’s world very much. As Nyfid, himself, sometimes had to admit he didn’t like it.

  Where they went from here depended purely on Heir Taga’s good will.

  She kept looking at the prisoners.

  “Maza,” she finally said, “you promise me you didn’t know?”

  Again, the Councilwoman dropped to her knees, this time snatching Heir Taga’s hand and pulling it to her pink-flushed face. Jazlin burst into tears, once more, and sobbed, “I don’t care what happens to me now, dear. Kill me if you have to. Just please don’t doubt that I would never, ever let them hurt you. Never. I’d have thrown myself on their swords before a single one of them put so much as a finger on you. I promise it with my blood and spirit! I can stand dying. Dying is easy. But I can’t stand you not trusting your Maza!”

  Heir Taga slowly knelt and put an arm around the old woman, who reflexively clutched at the commander—whom Jazlin had known and loved from childhood.

  “Somebody has to pay for this,” Heir Griboth said, steel in his voice.

  Nyfid thought it over. And decided he quite agreed with the Heir’s sentiment.

  Standing up, he said, “And somebody will. We’ll make sure of it.”

  He motioned to the cell exit with an arm. Heir Taga stood up and led them all into the corridor outside.

  * * * * *

  Brad R. Torgersen Bio

  The 2019 DragonCon Dragon Award winner for Best Science Fiction novel (A STAR-WHEELED SKY) Brad R. Torgersen’s award-winning stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. A veteran and Chief Warrant Officer in the United States Army Reserve, Brad has also served in half a dozen different countries. Married for 25 years to his very first audio narrator, Brad lives with his family in the Intermountain West. He can be found most often at his Facebook page, and occasionally writes non-fiction for both his personal blog, and the Mad Genius Club group blog. A political Classical Liberal, Brad believes in having an open mind—so long as you don’t let your brains fall out.

  # # # # #

  Vorwhol Dishonor by Quincy J. Allen

  The Championship

  Kael - Vorwhol Homeworld

  Talgeth World Championship - Kullbwa City

  “This is it,” Shaleen shouted over the crowd as her youngest brother, Kor, looked down at her with golden eyes just like hers. Their hides were maroon, and they shared the family trait of four black horns, with two primaries sprouting above the eyes and a shorter pair just outside that. “If he calls the penalty, we have a good shot at wining this thing.” The worry and excitement in her voice was palpable.

  Planting his blunted war spear in the soil for leverage, he reached down and grasped her titanium-armored forearm as she grabbed his. With a heave, she slipped up onto the back of his mount to settle in behind him. She quickly checked to ensure that her blunted blade was secured in its scabbard at her hip.

  “The Prime has to make the call,” Kor replied over his shoulder. “That striker definitely got you from behind.” The female danketh beneath them shifted uneasily as a growl rumbled from deep within her thick chest. She dug into the earth with shrouded claws, clearly anxious to see the match begin again. “Easy, Sula,” Kor said in a soothing voice. He patted his mount’s furred neck as he shifted his spear to the other side of Sula’s body. “They’ll get the game started soon enough.”

  Danketh were fearsome beasts that instilled fear in even the most capable of warriors. They had sinewy bodies four meters long, with broad shoulders, dark fur, and four thick legs that ended in six-centimeter claws. Three gray stripes ran along their backs, ending in a thick, barbed tail half the length of the body. In a Talgeth match, their claws were covered by rounded shoes of a sort to keep them from severely injuring other mounts and players, and the barbs of their tails were wrapped in heavy hides as a means of preventing fatalities. They had low, flat heads, wide-set eyes, and short muzzles full of sharp, bone-crushing teeth.

  The stadium thundered with guttural roars, sharp hisses, and foot stomping as a crowd a hundred thousand strong watched the Adjudicator Prime ride his own fearsome danketh toward the sideline. The beast huffed across the field with a lumbering gait.

  “Here it comes,” Shaleen said, pointing to one of the giant monitors arrayed around the stadium. Kor and the rest of both companies arrayed across the field turned their eyes upward.

  Framed in the center of the shot, the Adjudicator reined in his muzzled mount not far from the sidelines and sat immobile for several seconds. His robes were the crimson of Vorwhol blood, and they fluttered in a crisp b
reeze that had helped keep the combating companies cool in their armor during the sun-blanched Talgeth World Championship. The mark of his station—a silver band holding a curve of bright metal adorned with short, black bristles—rose up over his angular skull and down to just above his eyes. A black battle horn dangled beneath his arm on a crimson cord.

  The Adjudicator raised sapphire eyes to the stands, his scaled blue hide and dark fan of short horns a proud visage that commanded authority and poise. He lifted the subahn-ghi, a bright red crest of stiff bristles, that he had retrieved from where it had fallen upon the dusty field.

  “I will have peace,” he said, holding up his hand. His voice was carried through speakers around the entire stadium, and the crowd went virtually silent.

  His eyes drifted across an ocean of Vorwhol spectators, each one awaiting his proclamation with bated breath. Those long-snouted faces, like his, were sharp, angular, and covered with scales. Every head had a leathery fringe rising up behind pointed ears that joined into a crown of dark horns curving above each intent visage. Only a portion of the spectators had blue hides, while the rest displayed colors ranging from black to gray to white, and nearly every color under the sun in between.

  “The penalty is confirmed,” the Adjudicator announced solemnly.

  “That’s it!” Shaleen shouted as Kor patted her armored thigh, and the rest of their company, the Emerald Sword, thumped their spears into the ground.

  Half of the crowd cheered, as if in victory, while the other half hissed their discontent. Everyone watching knew what the penalty meant, especially when the contest was tied at six victories each.

  She glanced at her other brother, Halek—only one year younger than her and two older than Kor—where he sat astride Oni, a giant male danketh renowned for its ferocity. Halek flashed a draconian grin from beneath his green crest as his titanium armor glinted in the sunshine. His armor, like hers, had been tricked out with deep greens and deeper blues that made their family’s Talgeth company colors look like the churning ocean in daylight.

  They now stood upon the precipice of victory, for with one last valiant push, the Talgeth World Championship could go to the Emerald Sword, a company that had been the prize of Shaleen’s family for four generations. Their opponents, the Black Marauders, were the defending champions and had held that title for two years running.

  Every Talgeth match—be it with mountless younglings or professionals astride the finest danketh alive—was won with one of two opposing companies achieving seven victories in a match. Those victories represented the Seven Cities of Jultomir, conquered almost two thousand years earlier.

  In that ancient age, noble warriors had been desperate to unseat the tyrant Khazashuun, who had tried to conquer the world with a fanatical army known as the Tahn Kree. They were brutal, delighting in conflict and killing everything in their path. But one warrior, the great hero Fionkhar, rose to stand against them, uniting tribes and fighting a war that lasted a hundred years. When it was over, they named him Subahn, and he was given a red crest as the symbol of his station.

  The Adjudicator held up his hand, and the crowd went silent.

  “The home company’s mid-striker,” the Adjudicator intoned, “made an illegal attack from the rear against a mounted Kosai. The mantle of Subahn shall remain with the visitors, and that of the Tahn Kree with the home company.”

  Again, the crowd erupted in roars, hisses, and thundering feet. There were no insults hurled at the Adjudicator, and not a single soul disputed the ruling. The judgment had been made, and the Vorwhol, for all their bloody past and fierce temperament, held honor and order above all else…at least in civilized society.

  With a hand, the Adjudicator silenced the crowd and then turned his mount to face the two rivaling companies of warriors that had taken the field two hours earlier.

  “Companies,” he announced, “take your positions and prepare for combat. Subahn to the east and Tahn Kree to the west.”

  As he watched, one hundred combatants began positioning themselves upon an earthen field four hundred meters across and two hundred meters wide. At one end was a ten-meter swath of purple-stained soil, representing a Tahn Kree fortress and the line the Kosai of the Subahn had to cross to achieve a victory.

  The combatants aligned themselves along an unseen line about two-thirds the length of the field and arranged themselves into their combat groups. Both companies were mounted upon armored danketh, their furred bodies glinting with light plates of titanium along their forelimbs and over their bodies. The warriors, too, were covered in gleaming titanium, custom fitted to surround their bodies like a second skin. The Emerald Sword gleamed in blue and green, while the Marauders wore a much starker black and yellow. Both teams were armed primarily with blunted spears, although some wore sheathed blades, depending upon their role on the field.

  Shaleen, being the Kosai, was the only warrior who rode behind a rider so that she could dismount at the thirty-meter line and run the rest of the way to the end zone.

  The Adjudicator rode solemnly up to where Shaleen sat behind her brother. His mount was calm as it approached, while Sula shifted uneasily beneath her riders. The Adjudicator pulled up beside them and held out the red crest to Shaleen and bowed his head once.

  “The subahn-ghi is again yours, warrior,” he said. “Wear it with pride. Carry it with courage. Seek your victory.”

  “I shall honor the Talgeth,” she said, taking the crest from his hands.

  She raised it over her head and slipped the short shaft at its base into the stanchion receiver mounted upon her helm. It clicked into place and would stay there unless enough force was applied straight up or to either side to break it free of the clips that held it. The design allowed the Kosai a good deal of acrobatic movement and yet could be taken by an opponent during ritualistic combat.

  The Adjudicator nodded his head once again and then nudged his danketh away at a slow gallop. As the other Adjudicators moved to their positions around the field, he rounded the back of the Emerald Sword line and took up a position forty meters distant, edging toward the sidelines where he turned his mount and faced the companies.

  Shaleen looked over her brother’s shoulder at four wide lines of Black Marauders a hundred meters away. There was another small cluster of them twenty meters behind that, and a lone, unmounted Marauder warrior standing ten meters in front of the end-zone.

  Gorsheik is waiting for me, she thought.

  Gorsheik was the Marauder’s Kosai when they received the mantle of Subahn. He was a fierce warrior and one of the best in the league. He had been the heart of Marauder victories again and again, showing skill, guile, and a desire to win at just about any cost. He was almost as good as Shaleen’s eldest brother, lost to the family four years hence. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was good enough to best Gorsheik in single combat. She shook her head, dismissing her doubts. She would have to be if they were going to take the Championship home.

  “I’m going with Father’s special play,” she whispered into Kor’s ear. It was their best chance at winning.

  He nodded and tightened his grip on Sula’s reins.

  “Company!” Shaleen shouted. She looked to her left and right as every member of the Emerald Sword turned their heads toward her. The crests of their helms drew a line toward their Kosai. She held her fist above her head and made several motions, opening and closing her hand. She was calling the play, and it was one the Black Marauders had not seen yet.

  One last push, she thought. One attempt to steal away the title from the Marauders.

  As one, the Emerald Sword slammed the butts of their spears into the ground, signaling they were ready to begin.

  Shaleen tightened her grip on her brother’s waist and waited for the signal. She looked left and right as her company leaned forward in their saddles, each of them eying the enemy formations ahead.

  The Adjudicator sucked in a deep breath and lifted the black horn to his lips. A moment later, his horn fi
lled the stadium with one clear note.

  The entire Emerald Sword line leapt forward, their mounts roaring a challenge as the Marauder lines moved forward at a trot.

  The crowd rose in their seats and went mad with cheers, hoots, and the thunder of stomping feet.

  Kor eased back on Oni’s reins as the Sword mounts surged forward. Shaleen prepared herself for what was about to happen. The flanking squads of six riders on either side of them angled in and took up positions in front of Oni about ten meters ahead, forming a phalanx. Two more squads shifted in, creating a buffer line to the left and right of the phalanx.

  The Marauder strikers shouted out orders as their danketh moved forward, responding to the approaching spear points of the Sword combatants. Their lines shifted in, angling in to form three rows of eight riders in the middle and wings of riders extending forward to enclose the Sword advance.

  The distance between them shortened each second—a hundred meters, eighty, fifty…

  “Now!” Shaleen screamed at the top of her lungs and clutched Kor even tighter.

  Kor’s squad, as well as Halek’s, yanked hard on their reins, jerking their mounts’ heads to the side with a roar. Both squads veered sharply to the right, forming a second phalanx, with Halek at the tip and Kor riding at its center.

  The lines of the Emerald Sword and Black Marauders slammed together. Spears hammered into chest plates, and danketh crashed into one another with a cacophony of clashing armor and thick bodies. Warriors tumbled to the ground and danketh battered at each other with blunted claws and muzzled maws.

  A cloud of dust rose into the air as massive feet tore at the ground, seeking purchase and the upper hand.

  Halek skirted the pileup, racing quickly around the outer edge of the enemy’s flank. That portion of the enemy line veered to meet them and crashed into the side of Halek’s phalanx, collapsing it as those combatants tore into one another. Reduced by half, the formation pressed forward at a full gallop. The rest of Kor’s squad shifted to the left, forming a protective line as he and their best striker raced down the field.