Alliance

by Bruce S Larson

  “You relate a riddle. One with more twists than a double helix.”

  “One that may affect life beyond Asherah. And within it.” Zaria looked skyward as if seeing what lay beyond the false sky.

  “Well,” Gin looked down at his bright shirt and khaki shorts. “I wonder if I should dress for travel.”

  Fire. It once burned as an impenetrable aegis around the beams that fell towards the planet Hell. The beams were once part of a ship commanded by General Ursuhr. He was dead, having lost in battle to General Anguhr. Now that red aegis was also dead. The fire that burned around the arcane steel was born of friction with the planet’s strange atmosphere. Friction also burned in those who watched the fragment blaze across the sky.

  “Bahl, I ask again. Consider what may come.” Inaht held her sword grip but her free, left hand was opened and extended to Bahl in a beseeching gesture.

  Inaht glanced over to the milling army of diverse forms. The various warriors slowly grew accustomed to standing on Hell fully exposed, and to the field of corpses of those who did not enter the protective void when Hell radiated death even for immortals, giants, and monsters that once fought them all.

  Inaht stood near Aekos. His predator’s eyes were half closed as his mind searched for words to support Inaht, his typical rival among the refugee force. The army currently followed Bahl who stood with Aekos and Inaht apart from the mass. His arms were folded tightly across his torso with his right hand lowered as it gripped the mace he had torn from Sutuhr’s corpse.

  Bahl stared at the meteoric piece of ship. However, his focus was on containing his anger at his two greatest lieutenants who covertly argued with him over a plan he saw as essential to survival.

  “We are all warriors, and your followers.” Inaht continued. “But this campaign you seek. It may not be something we survive.”

  “To be a warrior is to fight and face death.” Bahl grated, and did not face his two friends.

  “To be a warrior is to kill the enemy,” Aekos said. “To bring death to their cause. To save your people from chains and from death.” He looked at his spear taken from the ruler Khan he had slain and hoped no irony tainted his words.

  “You bear no chains, but now you are more tightly bound than as a prisoner or slave.” Bahl countered and still stared skyward. “You are essentially dead, here on the surface of Hell.”

  “Here, I am alive. That is how I fight.” Aekos said in as quiet a rumble he could make. He moved his spear to his side away from Bahl. “I resist death, and each day I do so, I increase the chance I will be free of Hell and its bondage of my fate.”

  “Fate?” Bahl snapped his focus on the centaur-like beast. “I can see fate, great monster. It is obvious. It stalks among us. It is our greatest enemy. But we can resist it, and must.”

  “I know of what you speak.” Aekos rolled his shark-like eyes toward the army. “I see the divisions forming. The differing species form again into separate groups now that we need not huddle together in the Slags. Greater space is dividing our camaraderie.”

  “Then I am right.” Bahl narrowed his gaze at his reptilian aide. “Why do you contest my decision?”

  “Lord Bahl, I seek a way to save our unity. But to march against Hell? We would need to leave the places where we can hide and march to a portal to breech the interior, and then take the Forge.”

  Bahl raised the mace as he asserted his point. “It is that risk that will bind our minds to one goal and forestall rivalries from being unleashed.”

  “But tactically, Lord.” Inaht sighed and forced herself to continue. “For once I agree with Aekos. Though we walk the planet’s surface, we have been trapped within a small region. We know nothing of what now lurks in Hell. Yes, she, the almighty Dark Urge, appears to be hurt, maybe dead. But she was ever a cunning god. Maybe she could not beat whoever shattered her ships, but she can beat us if we assault Hell without reconnaissance. Blind.”

  “Look at our force.” Bahl jerked the mace as he stopped himself from pointing it at the army and revealing the debate’s intensity. “We are also weakened. Worse still, we are an army of former enemies. Do you think our unity will last if the fear that bound us is now gone? How will we survive if both Hell and our former enmity grow stronger? We have only time as our ally. Yet it, too, may betray us. How long before until fight among ourselves? If we act quickly, we may be able to strike Hell before it recovers, and stay united. But we must begin the march while we have any power left.”

  “And when the march ends?” Aekos asked as he inhaled deeply.

  “Then time is up. Then we attack, if we are not already attacked and at war.” Bahl replied with a grim but determined tone.

  “Or dead.” Inaht added, coldly.

  “Yes. Or, finally, dead.” Bahl said and stood straighter as his posture stiffened. “But not as running parasites. If we die on this campaign, will die as warriors.”

  “My friend and Lord, Bahl, we knew when we fled to hide beneath the outward looking ego of hate, dead is dead. Oblivion has no hall for the honored.”

  Bahl’s face and body rippled with anger, yet he replied in control. “It is not honor I seek. It is life. Survival. This march will give us more time to achieve that objective. If the Dark Urge strikes, we resist as we can. If we strike first, then we fight for victory against whatever we find. But if we do nothing, we will turn against ourselves. You know that is inevitable. Then we will never know if our final battle could have been to conquer Hell, and retake our own fate.”

  Inaht and Aekos fell silent. They exchanged reluctant glances. Bahl flexed his legs and turned to walk toward his army. Aekos reached up with his empty hand to entreat his leader to stop.

  “Bahl, I see your wisdom, albeit through concern of our future, now more acute than even before. But I understand and will follow.”

  “For unity.” Inaht added.

  “For victory.” Bahl said with command.

  “For freedom.” Aekos said, and gazed back at the sky waiting for more debris from another battle to catch fire as it fell.

  A mind changed. A strand of data unlocked. Its information spun free and was absorbed. Intellect ascended. The mind sat within a skull impenetrable to most battlefield armaments. The demon brain controlled a living weapon that flew, inspired terror, and followed commands with precision. That required neurologic sophistication, but little higher intellect. Still, demons came with built-in improvements. Data strands lay precoiled within the mephitic folds of their brains. The feature was rarely used, but useful.

  This demon’s infernal cortex was now able to consider planetary Armageddon, plus graviton amplitude, and perhaps even punchlines to alien jokes. Not that it would ever solve questions of transdimensional phase interaction, or take the time to contemplate the cadence of limericks in a quarter million celestial tongues and their various cultural interpretations. Yet, now, with time, this demon could. Uruk had more immediate needs for it. The needs still involved warfare.

  Most civilizations that fell to Hell’s forces never knew each demon held a library within their dreadful skulls. Not that they, or the demons, actually cared at a planet’s end of days. Now the ability to enhance demonic minds was a strategic advantage for Uruk. So far, his mission to bring Lord Anguhr this ship had not gone well. The horde’s top leaders resisted joining Anguhr’s command. Thankfully for Uruk, they were now dead. Of immediate concern was the Ignitaur insurrection. It appeared to slow. The reports from distant firefights diminished. Fewer demons were being engaged by Ignitaur forces. Uruk knew such lulls by an enemy could mean they suffered diminished resources, or they redeployed under a complete change in strategy. Whatever the cause, the pause worked to Uruk’s advantage, and he worked quickly to capitalize on it.

  A paused demon was a beast looking for purpose. With their top hierarchy gone, they needed a restoration of order. Each was a wolf needing its place in the pack. As Uruk moved through the ship, he gained followers by his rank, size, and strength. However, no ot
her Field Master had ever taken command of another General’s horde. Uruk knew he needed to solidify his control and loyalty of those who came to his sword. If hostilities became more intense, he needed a loyal fighting force and not thralls seeking momentary reassurance.

  Unlike the relationships of other Generals and Field Masters, Anguhr taught Uruk many secrets of a General’s power. Trust augmented Uruk’s loyalty to his General. He used the power he learned on his growing legion. Increased awareness meant demons better understood the tactical situation and recognized the ship’s war was for more than dogged loyalty to a dead General. Uruk had a plan of battle. Logic would show the demons its worth. Then, they would follow him, not only for his rank, but from confidence in his command. Uruk would not base his leadership on mere faith in strength and desire for purpose.

  Intelligent demons could find new purpose. Uruk did when his faith in the Dark Urge shattered. He witnessed the lies of her conquests at Anguhr’s side. The experience forced him to reconsider his life-long faith. He formed new strands on his own. They were based on experience and searing facts. Uruk stayed in the service of his Lord Anguhr because his General was brave enough to seek the truth and not bow to lies as the other Generals did. The truth should bring this horde to Uruk’s cause. Once the horde followed him, he would take the ship. Hopefully soon afterward, they would find a way to steer it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  There was a war. Hell had been the center of galactic catastrophe. Now the planet’s face engaged in mindless battles of its aftermath. The Dark Urge had seared her homeworld by stoking Hell’s fires into a rage beyond flame. Dust of granulated acid and ancient spite drifted over molten fields on its cooling surface. The dust grains fell from scorching winds that snatched them off mountaintops or regions too spiteful to yield to radiation and its child and ally, heat. More came from rock cinders blasted skyward in impacts of exploded hellship.

  If one sought a positive for the malignant landscape, the best was that Hell was never ambivalent on life. It was ever lethal. Onto one of Hell’s plains, toxic to physical and psychic existence, came an army of dispossessed warlords, angry giants, and revenge permeated monsters. They might seem fitting denizens of Hell, if they were not all refugees of its persecution and sworn to one day destroy it.

  Their leader Bahl climbed to the apex of an armor-plated hill. The massive, armadillian Bandors created the hill. The muffled noise from Bahl’s living mount was the complaints from their child-weapons. Atop the mount, Bahl saw what his allies Inaht and Aekos had mentioned. The differing species were drifting away from the unified mass and back into separate groups. They had survived this long forced together to hide from certain doom. The moment of freedom allowed them to disperse. Many warriors had fought each other before uniting against Hell. Separation would grow into rivalry. Bahl hoped his words would change that.

  Bahl lifted Sutuhr’s mace over his head in his right hand. The eyes and sensors of an army focused on him. Many recognized the mace. Bahl allowed shock to ripple across the army, and then spoke.

  “This is a weapon. Its function is obvious. It does not slash, nor fire beams. It simply smashes all it strikes. It was a symbol of Hell. It was the weapon of Sutuhr, the Devotion. So devoted was he to the Dark Urge, that now he is dead!”

  A loud murmur followed his last words.

  “I ripped this mace from his burnt corpse. He was beaten. We know not the warriors who defeated him and his horde and the other General whose ship rains down in flames. We need not. For we, too, are warriors! We, too, stand on Hell’s face and see a victory! We have freedom. We are all, as one, an army! Liberated and ready. Together we can finish the war the unknown force began. Together we can crush Hell!”

  Bahl thrust down the mace into his open hand. Roars and flashes of color signified a cheer across most of the gathered.

  “We see Hell can strike us, even when hidden.” Bahl motioned the mace towards the field of corpses fused into the ground of his followers that did not escape into the void.

  “Our fallen friends and allies warn us. We must take this time to strike the power that took them. We are the survivors of Hell’s searing hate. We hold the legacy of perished friends and entire worlds. But we are more. We are their vengeance!”

  Another, brighter and louder cheer rolled from the army.

  “The battle that made the Dark Urge rage against Hell's very surface is over. The radiation has ebbed. We now have power! Right here, on the very planet that birthed many of us, and then betrayed us. Today, here on Hell, we make justice! Justice! For all worlds!”

  Bahl thrust the mace high, again. A roar and flashes followed. Bahl looked down with a determined stare as he sought any who were still not joining the cheers.

  “The Dark Urge is weak. That makes us stronger. And we are the warriors she feared. And look! Where are the Generals? Azuhr is gone. Sutuhr dead. Fragments of hellship strike the world that forged their power. It is a new age. Our age! There is no one to stop us! We will take the Forge! Today, now, we march to conquer Hell!”

  Bahl aimed the mace at a point on the horizon as if indicating the spot of victory.

  A chant and display of his name surged from the army. Raised weapons followed the chant’s rhythm.

  Bahl! Bahl! Bahl! Bahl! Bahl!

  Bahl looked down at his united forces with confidence. Near the far side of the army at the edge of the corpse field, Aekos and Inaht raised their arms and weapons along with the pulse of the chant. They did not look at each other, but shared the same inner conflict between hope and dread. Farther away, no one noticed the silk surrounding the hostage flex.

  The bridge of Anguhr’s ship was silent. Even the roll of hellfire across the bulkheads and decking seemed muted. Perhaps it, like his demon officers, didn’t wish to voice questions their recent history might spark. Before Tectus, Anguhr and his demons engaged in an epic rebellion and overcame impossible odds to defeat two loyal Generals, their hellships, and hordes. Soon after, Anguhr committed them to a battle of liberation, not conquest, at the starless world.

  Now, Anguhr sought an ally, not a world to sunder. The loyalty of his forces was unbroken, but sentient beings, including demons, were certain to have questions when life veered along different course. It was a new era. Perhaps, a more peaceful one. For living weapons, that felt odd.

  Zaria’s questions to Anguhr on Tectus pained him worse than any deep battle wound. Rarely could a weapon penetrate his skin, even if it cut through his armor. Such wounds were merely physical and typically healed with unnatural speed. They were a surface annoyance. Zaria’s subtle strikes reached into his mind. Yet the true reason her verbal goads penetrated his will was that Anguhr’s own realization followed a similar trajectory. After his rebellion, the path he chose was clear. He sought to build an empire, a vast thing that persisted through time. But his powers and forces were born for destruction, not creation, or maintenance. And perhaps worse, he had not considered the thoughts of demons born for a constant war of annihilation if there was no enemy.

  Anguhr inhaled deeply and flames roiled near his throne. He considered that, at this moment, his was in mental combat with himself. But he possessed the discipline and mental power that kept out the Great Widow and inspired a loyal horde. Thus, he made a strategy to quell his inner strife. His solution was very demon-like. Charge ahead. He would continue with his plan.

  Anguhr’s hellship entered the Kaekus system. The main, inhabited planet was an odd world. They beamed an invitation to his ship to come and conquer their world. Anguhr assumed they did not realize conquest by Hell had typically meant the complete destruction of all life and sundering of the planet into raw blocks to feed the Dark Urge’s perverted use of the Forge. Trains of such blocks still drifted among the galaxy toward Hell from former orbits around distant stars, if the stars still survived and had not exploded for tactics or sport.

  If Kaekus did realize their fate if Hell’s forces arrived, perhaps they were collectively insane, or ha
d taken a massive gamble that inviting a hellship garnered favor. Or, that if they called upon more than one, the ships would see each other as rivals and annihilate one another, thus saving their world. That would not have seemed likely, until recently. Now, it was impossible. The strategy behind the invite was open for interpretation.

  The message itself was vague. It included stellar and planetary coordinates, and a greeting. There were two alternative translations to the text. Please come. Attack us. We welcome your warfare. Or, please arrive. Destroy us. Our world annihilates, gladly. Proxis offered the theory that the species worshiped strength. Thus, they sought to meet the greatest power in the galaxy. Solok offered a sharper view. The message senders might enjoy cliffs, and strong gravity.

  To Anguhr the entreaty meant a chance to bring willing participants to his dream of empire. Kaekus was in Anguhr’s original campaign arc. It was slated for conquest a few systems after Kellis, the last planet Anguhr attacked while still in service to the Dark Urge. He was called back to Hell from Kellis, and rebelled soon after. He now wondered if Kellis rebuilt and made monuments to the day Hell came, ravaged their planet, but then went away. Perhaps they preserved a smoking crater or a skyscraper remnant his axe had cleaved. He missed his axe. The people on Kellis certainly did not. Perhaps one day they would join him as part of his empire. The unlikelihood of that made him grumble. It made the bridge vibrate, slightly.

  Proxis and Solok exchanged glances at the sound. It was followed by a low bark from Proxis as his sensors reported approaching ships.

  “Two ships. Unknown class. Intercept vector along stellar plane, five orbital widths from Kaekus.

  “Do they greet us?” Solok asked.

  “Unknown,” Proxis answered and focused on the main projection before them.

  The screen showed the two targets. Auroras flickered around the energy shields of both ships as they passed through a band of radioactive dust the alien pilots hoped would act as camouflage in their attack. The main element of their design was a sweeping sickle shape that linked a large cylinder at the widest end of the gleaming sickle to a smaller, bullet-shaped counterpart with a raised cupola at the rear. A dome capped the bow of the large cylinder with a central aperture that glowed ever brighter.