Alliance

by Bruce S Larson

  For the Great Widow, her web offered familiar refuge. The silken architecture granted a psychological continuum from simpler days when she sated hunger with venom and silk to her eons surviving Hell and its mad queen’s rage. Now, anger simmered inside the arachnid’s mind. Even if her trap had failed, she had identified and ensnared Octuhr with their alliance. What stoked her inner fires was that the forsaken General had accessed and used her web and left a large, lingering resonance through much of its vast network. It made her web feel strange. A sacred privacy had been violated. Octuhr had left the strands, for now. She wanted his traces gone, forever.

  The spider was typically patient. However, now alone she scaled her seemingly endless strands, up and down and in all directions the silk reached in the sideward dimension where it stretched. It was as much a nervous act as exploration of how much Octuhr had touched the web. He reached it through his quantum link with silk the woven into his being. But, as with all Generals, that contact was meant to be one way. A General was never meant to reach back into the web. The interwoven strands were for Hell’s resident spider to reach into them, and sometimes control their ships. As with certain death, Octuhr defied that.

  Octuhr had snaked through the silk, mentally. The Great Widow touched the silk with her body. Nevertheless, his lingering vibrations felt as a parasite inside her brain. The Great Widow slowed her pace, and focused. The first moments Octuhr reached into the web began when the Dark Urge stoked the Forge so Hell’s fires would reach and burn in space. This was to shield her against her own fighting children when it was clear Anguhr had rebelled. To Octuhr, Anguhr was the usurper. However, his revolt sparked events and brought Octuhr to full life. The radiation invigorated his ostracized, near-corpse thrown onto Hell to die so that Azuhr’s child could be reborn. Their strands formed a circle.

  The energized Octuhr then reached out. His probes were weak at first, but he found the web. He traveled along the strands linked to him. Then, as the radiation increased, his power grew. He traveled along more and more stands and reached more and more intersections until his mind diverted along too many networks. His consciousness pulled tighter and tighter in trying to comprehend all it saw from all the strands. The energy empowering him and his mind expanded too far, too fast. It tore apart.

  Octuhr’s resonance vanished. At least, for a time. His physical mind must have been diverted into a pocket dimension, much like the web’s realm. It saved his fragmented mind. His psyche snapped back along quantum lines and reformed along the silk woven within him. His mind was wounded, but also expanded.

  The vast power imbued to the Generals at their genesis allowed his seared brain to heal, and retain some knowledge gained. Yet, his body had stayed in its pathetic, unformed state. Surely, sudden self-awareness of what he was, now, compared to knowing the powerful form he was supposed to have, amplified his madness and rage. Those traits made him a true child of the Dark Urge. Perhaps, the spider feared, one far too much like his mother.

  Octuhr’s mind had been violently expanded. The mind of the Dark Urge was now withdrawn. The mind of the Great Widow began to weave.

  Su’anff heard metal clanks and felt the air pressure release. His prison cell opened. The hinges of the heavy hatch creaked slightly as it swung open with labored slowness. Su’anff considered how the system operated on bolted locks and hinges all actuated by external muscle. The system would not fail if the power generators died. His cell was an improvised storage chamber. The heart of the Tectus was an improvised colony ship. Many native tools and even clothes looked repurposed. It was a planet an engineer could have an impact. Perhaps, even a lone, alien deserter could become an engineer where the word frontier seemed too sophisticated.

  No one came in. The hatch was open. They obviously wanted Su'anff to come out. He rose from the floor and squeezed through the portal made for a much smaller species. In the passageway, he met with gun muzzles. He had worked on quelling his fears inside his makeshift cell, and remained calm and still. He recognized them as weapons from his own Ru’cenorian soldiers. He resisted nausea when recalling their slaughter by demons. Once they were proud, powerful warriors. Then, they were discarded meat.

  Their recovered weapons now armed the smaller Tectus natives. The would-be engineer admired the mechanical grasper and extension rigs harnessed to the Tectus natives. It allowed them to easily lift and, theoretically, endure firing them. One tense guard aimed a mark-30 rapid-fire support rifle. The other, more confident guard aimed the heavier armor-assault mark-45.

  Su’anff figured the Ru-cenorian firearms would snap off the extensions and the guards’ arms if fired, but not before a well-placed round struck his torso and perhaps punched through his armor, thick hide, ribcage, his first or second heart, and perhaps shattered his spine. That was possible for the armor-piercing rounds. Thus, Su’anff made no effort to take them from his guards, and followed their leads.

  Laas joined them in the passage, unarmed. His gait was a near sprint. He took little interested in the guards but was looked with intensity at Su’anff.

  “I am afraid Nemosian representatives had no desire to even discuss your existence,” Laas said. “Let alone negotiate for you release.”

  “Nemorosan.” Su’anff corrected. He dropped his head and was quiet for a moment as he tried to accept he was indeed alone now and perhaps for all his hundreds of years to come. Although his tone indicated stress, Laas gave him the moment.

  “It is better than execution,” Su’anff finally said.

  “In order to integrate you and teach you our norms, I have arranged for some freedom of motion.” Laas said.

  “Freedom?” Su’anff rolled his eyes to his armed guards.

  “For an invader, this is great freedom.” Laas retorted, sharply.

  “True,” Su’anff replied in a lowered voice.

  “We want your input. I hope it will be of greater value, this time. I suggest you make every effort to cooperate.”

  “I will. If for no other reason than there is nothing else for me to do. Boredom is a well known inducer of compliance.” Su’anff regretted revealing that as soon as he said it.

  After several turns down empty passageways, they entered a communications chamber that smelled of ozone and heated dust. It, too, was deserted. A large screen dominated the chamber. Several work stations and smaller screens relayed images and information to absent technicians. Su’anff knew the absence was due to his presence. Either from fear or security concerns, the locals kept their distance. However, the guards stayed out in the passage. It was a hopeful sign. He thought this was where Tectus first noted and analyzed the fleet. He never saw an invasion from the enemy’s perspective. Now, the enemy was his only hope to live.

  Su’anff considered the nearly three-dimensional display screens superior to some used by species in his fleet. His former fleet, he reminded himself as a heavy feeling overtook his mind and guts. The dominant screen and several others displayed a telescopic view of space with a metallic cylinder with two sets of wing-like projection floating in the center. Su’anff recognized the Nemorosan communication buoy.

  “It’s a communication relay,” Su’anff offered before Lass asked any questions.

  “It’s broadcasting a repeated signal,” Laas said. He reached to a console to tap a series of keys.

  Physical interface, Su’anff noted to himself.

  A repeating audio recreation of the signal broadcast in the chamber.

  “I recognize the coding,” Su’anff offered as he heard and felt the signal. He processed it through his implanted receivers as well. His eyes became wide. His massive body froze.

  “What is it?” Lass asked with agitation.

  Su’anff clicked his teeth, and then verbalized his dread. “Buran. He's transmitting a message—to the hellship!”

  Su’anff’s loud voice sounded almost as a roar to Laas who covered his ears for an instant.

  “What is the message?” Laas now demanded the answer.

&n
bsp; The guards outside looked into the chamber with concern.

  “Coordinates.” Su’anff said. His body relaxed and began to vibrate, gently. The low, repeating sound from his mouth was easy to understand. He was chuckling.

  “This funny?” Lass shouted in anger. “Some sort of alien joke?”

  “No. I'm relieved!” Su’anff bleated. “The coordinates are not here. Not for here.” He reached down his massive paws in order to hug Lass, but heard the creak of weapons rigs behind him and refrained.

  “I recognize them from when we attacked Buran's system!” Su’anff continued, but lowered his voice as Lass backed away. “We were stopped by the Sword Wing. But the coordinates are his own home. His solar system.”

  Laas was confused. “Why?”

  “He obviously thinks he can beat the hellship.” Su’anff snorted.

  “Can he?” The perplexed Laas shrugged.

  “Nothing ever has. Not one hellship was ever defeated, that I know of.” Su’anff mimicked the shrug.

  “And there were many,” Laas said and lowered his head.

  “Were, at least. Their campaigns ended and the ships withdrew. We—the fleet—filled that power vacuum. Although it took a massive fleet to equal one hellship.”

  “Before Buran became your admiral.” Laas sighed.

  “Yes. The Sword Wing became our flagship.”

  “That ship was purpose built to fight hellships?” Laas asked with a mix of hope and dread at ever seeing either ship above Tectus again.

  “It seemed so. But then he ran when faced with one.”

  “Just as you ran when faced with demons.” Laas said, and watched Su’anff’s response.

  Su’anff slumped. He leaned on a workstation but stood again when it creaked. “I suppose you are right. Buran and I have something in common, then.”

  “It seems Buran had a long-term plan. He sacrificed the fleet, your fleet, to get part of it.” Laas spoke in a direct but calm tone. He saw Su’anff’s emotional responses indicate he understood he was alone. It was an opportunity to break his allegiance with his former culture and begin reforming him as a member of Tectus’ culture.

  “And now he has that part, and he’s gone.” Su’anff’s thick neck relaxed. His head dropped like a boulder toward his armor-plated chest.

  “From what is reported about Buran, he acts when he has control.” Laas said. “If he wants to engage the hellship, now, he believes he has that control.”

  “Belief and fact. Some worlds think they are the same thing.” Su’anff said with a deep sigh.

  “They are fools.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “What you suggest is incredibly dangerous.” The Great Widow’s mind created a tone of dread to perfection.

  If the giant spider’s eight eyes could scowl, then they would at Octuhr. To see such a chilling stare, he would need a physical form looking back at her, and not be psychic energy vibrating through her web.

  Octuhr had been traveling in the folds beyond space, watching Buran, and becoming concerned someone was watching him. At times he felt as if something was close and about to strike. It was unnerving, even in quantum links between sites. He was certain he had deduced the identity of his pursuer from scanning Hell’s vast data. It made him more apprehensive.

  “Dangerous? Why?” Octuhr said as a challenge and goad. “You are a giant spider. She is prey.”

  “She is powerful!” The Great Widow snapped.

  Her web vibrated around her. The vibrations sent odd feelings through Octuhr’s surprisingly close, physical brain.

  “She was once half of a being from whence your mother also came,” the Great Widow continued. “As one, they controlled the Forge, the heart of the vast machine the galaxy now calls Hell. She is Zaria, and she helped defeat the almighty Dark Urge.”

  “Then she is an obvious threat. She must die.” Octuhr said with calm certainty.

  “Can you kill your mother?” The Great Widow asked. “As a practical matter. She only slumbers after a crushing defeat. Zaria will be difficult to counter, if not more. She is free.”

  “That freedom gave her the power to discover my actions in the galaxy, even hidden along quantum-psychic planes.” Octuhr’s tone rose with his tension. “That freedom threatens our strength.”

  “Then perhaps—”

  “She must die!” Octuhr’s scream echoed in the empty spaces of the web’s dimension.

  “Death may not be possible for a being so old and so strong. But I have caught many extraordinary creatures on my web. Perhaps there is room for one more.”

  “Then weave, spider. Weave!”

  “You, child, be calm.” The Great Widow rolled her calipers over her fangs. “Wars are not won through wrath and panic. Those are the allies of your foe. Their alliance may make you particles lost on stellar wind. Such is the memorial of oblivion. Power, victory may be your goal, but war is a constantly shifting plan. It requires time.”

  “Time?” Octuhr’s mind seemed to pause for a breath. His tone became mocking. “Time. Perhaps you have less of it than you think, oh, omniscient weaver.”

  “Explain. Now,” the giant spider demanded.

  “Very well. You can touch everywhere you have cast a strand. But no matter the vastness of your web, you touch them one at a time. Now, touch me. Touch the webbing you trapped me in when you cast me onto Hell. Touch the strands you wove within my being. See with my eyes the threat you have been blind to for so, so, long.”

  The Great Widow concentrated on Octuhr’s vibrations through her silk. She focused beyond his childish rage. She concentrated on his resonance, amplified by her cocoon over the capsule of infernal tissue she once wrapped and left on the bitter wastelands. She felt a swaying motion, near akin to a breeze buffeting an orb web. The gentle rocking continued. She heard the creak of enchanted silk pulled taught. She could hear a low thump. Thump. It was Octuhr’s hidden heart. She felt his blood course as tension flexed through webbing and veins. The throb. The pull. It was the same sensations she felt before inflicting her bite on prey when her venom and the victim’s blood became one.

  She found his mind at the end of the pulsing veins. Octuhr almost seemed frightened. Yet now she understood, at least in part, how he had survived the surface of Hell. He was not alone. How his captors lived was another mystery. The Great Widow turned to see through Octuhr’s mind. The sight was dark with patches of light and glimpses of motion through his unopened eyes, the membrane of his capsule, and the stretched webbing.

  The spider’s mind touched her cocoon around Octuhr. She saw the basalt-like posts carried between Khan warriors. She suppressed the shock, and continued her scan. Another Khan, a queenly leader looked ahead of her. Empress Inaht. A vicious conqueror. An army of other warriors and alien soldiers stretched in wary columns far ahead of Octuhr’s attendants. In the lead some distance away, the Great Widow could feel Bahl. Bahl. A warrior king long thought dead. He was a vowed enemy of the Dark Urge, Hell, and thus the Great Widow.

  And they’re coming. For you.

  The spider heard the thought made low like a whisper. It was Octuhr. He was taunting her. But he was right.

  The Great Widow slid her mind back inside her web’s dimension deep within Hell. She thought of Zaria who lived where she chose. The spider knew Zaria’s goal was seeking life and destroying Hell. She roamed the galaxy, and was Anguhr’s ally. Long ago, Zaria created the Keepers with her half-self and sister. Those beings became Khans. A great one now marched an army on Hell’s surface, no doubt also seeking its destruction. It appeared the Great Widow would act toward her alliance with Octuhr in a material sense, after all. For now, what threatened Hell, threatened the spider.

  The Great Widow would abandon the infernal place if she, too, could live free. But who would believe all she wanted was liberty after an eternity in service to the Dark Urge? Now Octuhr offered both alliance and a threat all his own. She needed to plan. Quickly.

  Fortunately, she had been weaving
new areas of her vast and strong web. However, the spider thought that certain, ancient regions of silk held secrets to aid her. Unleashed, they would serve her immediate needs. She began to climb down, ever deeper to where large, very large cocoons sat in darkness.

  Fire was their strength. Fire was their spells. They were one with the fire as it remade the ore. They were the steel born of flame. Through strength, they created themselves. They were Ignitaurs.

  Through each pour of molten alloy, each strike of hammer against steel on anvil, each release of arcane spark, and each thought cast into spell, they forged reality. The future was their form breaking from the mold to burn into tomorrow and cool into infinite days. They were Ignitaurs, the smiths of eternity.

  Mintek recalled these once-chanted beliefs. Before General Xuxuhr’s ship came to their world, every Ignitaur had reason to believe the words were true. Their hammers beat ore into life. Yet Mintek recently traded the hammer for weapons and took life. His recasting into warrior was foretold when the giant demon and his horde beset Mintek’s planet. The Ignitaurs managed to bind Xuxuhr in chains that would hold gods. They cheered as he struggled. They gasped as he broke free. They became as ore in the bowels of his ship, imprisoned to make and repair those same chains that Xuxuhr hurled as whips to destroy their alloy-clad world, and then others.

  As prisoners, the Ignitaurs did more than toil. They plotted. After eons, they escaped. They fought. Patience and pragmatism had guided them in their quest to escape. Once the battle was joined, they would accept annihilation of themselves and their demon jailers. However, for some, captivity had burned hopes of freedom into a quest for revenge. That quest was struck into a plan to destroy the demons’ ship so that others would never be enslaved.