by Blaze Ward
He didn’t think he could live the rest of his life with whatever it was lurking over him. Best to face it now.
The room had a familiar feeling to it, but nothing he could identify. Just bare walls with the pictures that the station had hung, but it almost felt like coming home.
Weird.
The four women were still with him, but they were better warriors than he was. All of them.
Any of them.
At least that would drive his male ego into not surrendering.
The siren call was coming from ahead of him, deeper into the suite. He moved to the door he wanted and pressed the button to slide it into the wall.
Darkness beyond. Well, dimness. The sort of shadows you got with the lights on the second-lowest setting, just enough to navigate a dark bedroom on the way to pee, if you woke up in the middle of the night.
The outer room had been bare, but this space was crowded. Almost messy. Lumps and shapes Daniel felt like he should be able to identify, but the words were only at the tip of his tongue and slid away before he could taste them.
At least the smell was right. He was back in his kitchen on Genarde, about to pull the perfect apple pie from the stove and rest it in the pie safe to perfume the entire restaurant with fall goodness.
Except there were no apples here. And Genarde was a thousand light-years away.
Daniel started to turn to say something to Erin. To alert her that something was wrong with his perceptions, his whole world.
The first attack hit his mind like a wet towel slung by a rude cook as he stepped to the door of his office to look out at the noise. He was blind and surprised.
No pain, but shock.
Daniel staggered back mentally and suddenly he was cut off from the four women who had come with him to their dooms. Their presence had lifted him at those moments when despair wanted to take root and drive him back to his bed.
Never.
The lights came up now as he fought back.
Faces rose from the couches around him and focused their will, their rage upon him.
Daniel managed to hold his barriers, but he had only perhaps a centimeter beyond his skin, and their mental blows rang on his shields like hammers beating a sword into shape.
He could see what they were now.
Unbidden, a word finally made it as far as his mouth, but he had clenched his jaws when the blow hit, so he could not say it aloud.
Ishtan.
In person, they looked like giant snakes covered over in a pink-ish fur almost as long as one of his fingers. Bodies six to ten meters long and almost as big as his narrow chest. Two arms near the top of the body for manipulating dexterously, with four fingers counter-opposed by two thumbs.
The jaw would split into three, equal parts, revealing three, bright-blue tongues. In each jaw was an eye, a multi-faceted orb that reminded Daniel of a fly, magnified a thousand time in a microscope.
There were six of them, a perfect hunting party. He didn’t know how he knew that, but the knowledge was there in the back of his mind as he fought them.
His four friends would be no help. Dimly, he sensed that one of the ishtan had simply taken control of them, rendering them immobile while the other five pressed hard against his shields and tried to reach inside his mind.
It would be like Urid-Varg had returned, except this time he wouldn’t be missed in the creature’s arrogant assumption that Kathra Omezi, the great warrior Commander with her all-female comitatus, would never have a male serving her.
These creatures had come for him. Perhaps they had been stalking Urid-Varg for all this time, and that was what had driven the monster into human space.
You are correct, Daniel Lémieux, one of them pulsed at him. Your time is ended. Your evil will not stand.
Behind him, Daniel heard the sounds of four women crashing bonelessly to the deck, and then the weight of a sixth mind suddenly landed upon his shoulders.
He growled in rage as the weight became unbearable. There was no thought of attacking, as the six of them thrust bolt after mental bolt at him and it was all he could do to deflect them and hold.
Slowly, they pushed him back into himself. Daniel felt like he was trying to hold up WinterStar by himself, standing on some ice planet in tunnels hollowed out by pink, furry bodies.
“I am not him!” Daniel screamed at the creatures, but it made no difference.
Six minds pressed down on him until they were inside his own mind now. Daniel resisted, but felt himself giving way under the assault, like the worst migraine he had ever had described to him, with someone having filled his veins with mercury and then applied a current that outlined every blood vessel in his skull so brightly that even he was blinded.
Finally, Daniel lost control of his flesh, having retreated to a small ball of impotent fury at the very center of his being.
He watched as if from outside himself as the body of Daniel Lémieux stepped awkwardly forward and sat on a chair, a human implement completely at odds with the rest of the furnishings in here.
Two of the ishtan slithered forward and bound his hands and ankles to the chair with strange hands that ended in four claw-tipped fingers opposed by two thumbs. They relaxed their stranglehold on his body at that point, but remained fiercely evident in his upper mind, like six strangers standing on an iced-over pond while he swam below.
At least he was not drowning, but there was precious little he could do but watch as they plundered his memories, seeking something.
Almost negligently, one of them turned to the four women. One by one, they rose, like awkward zombies or badly-programmed robots, staggering forward to sit next to each other on one of the couches.
Six ishtan surrounded him, even though he could only see three, with hints of two others weaving like mesmerized snakes on his peripheral vision.
Where is the xxxxxxxxx? one of them pounded on the ice with a mental bellow.
“The what?” he couldn’t help but reply, confused.
An image appeared on the ice. Or whatever the barrier was that they had erected, once they had driven him back far enough to plunder his mind.
The Star Turtle.
“Why?” he demanded of them.
Your evil will not stand, the strongest of them screamed back.
Daniel didn’t have an answer to that. Much of what he could do could only be described as evil. Even he said that.
But he had never met anyone else that would be a better choice, since the power was utterly gendered and no female could wield it.
Of course not, somebody said.
“Of course what?” Daniel channeled his fury to the surface.
No female should have power, one of the ishtan snarled in that mental space they occupied. They were egg-layers. Not intelligent creatures.
“Fools,” Daniel felt heat finally ignite in his bones. It gave him the strength to drive himself to the surface and confront them again. “In my world, they can be queens.”
His rage caught them by surprise. That much was obvious.
Where before he had been held under ice but not drowning, now Daniel found himself falling into one of their minds instead.
Thirty-Eight
Heat.
That was the impression Daniel had as his mind opened inside the other being, like a flower discovering morning dew.
The ishtan were from a cold planet. This room had the heat turned down considerably, but it was still too warm for the being to be comfortable.
Daniel had been inside other minds before this. Those could not resist him, but the ishtan were different. They could fight.
He had surprised this one with his rage and managed to penetrate the being’s mental barriers.
It would not be for long. Already, he could feel the male ishtan (they were all male?) begin to recoil from assaulting Daniel and preparing to thrust the intruding alien back out of his own head. Daniel leapt down into the creature’s memories as hard as he could, absorbing everything he could rea
ch without bothering to sort it.
Anything to understand how they came to be here, and why they were so intent on Daniel and the Turtle.
He felt like a five-year-old with money from grandpa again, setting foot into the candy store where everything was a wondrous joy to behold, and he didn’t know where to start.
Daniel opened his mouth and sucked memories in like one of the great whales on Earth, moving on from recent to the deepest ones he could find.
Who were the ishtan? What was their connection to Urid-Varg? Why were they here? Why did they need a Star Turtle?
He held them off as long as he could, but eventually five of them managed to grab enough of Daniel’s mind to drag him kicking and screaming out into the air and push him back into his own body.
Six faces close enough now to smell him, except that the ishtan had almost no olfactory senses, given the warrens of tunnels under stone and ice where they had developed.
Daniel felt the heat of a shallow volcano warm a breed of creatures midway between lizard and snake, still retaining the forelimbs, even as they evolved their latter legs away in favor of slithering and tunneling, deep down where they only emerged to hunt and scavenge.
Males had developed the mental powers of the gem to aid in hunting silently, but for whatever reason, the females were barely intelligent enough to have language.
Daniel had impressions of ice fields warmed from below, just enough heat and life that groups of ishtan could evolve intelligence and tool usage. Memories of monsters on the surface seeking prey and willing to risk ice worm tunnels, until those turned into hunting traps. Similarly, strange, six-legged creatures that reminded Daniel of terriers, charging into the tunnels to bite and rend, until they were somehow domesticated into the same tribal role that wolves had taken, once they turned into dogs.
So, this was their home.
It was, human, a voice answered, surprising him even more than the assaults had done. It is no more.
Daniel felt the one whose memory he had looted turn to him now and focus. They had both rifled each other’s past. It would come to know him almost as well as he did it, given time.
That was before the Destroyer came, the male continued.
Daniel had an image of a creature invading the tunnels. A biped, wearing a familiar-enough-looking bodysuit, lime green with white stripes as wide as Daniel’s hand connecting to white gloves and boots just like he wore, and the white belt invisible under Daniel’s outfit.
It was still there.
The only difference was the lack of that platinum housing embedded directly into the creature’s breastbone, just below the neck.
Rather than mental powers, the creature used technology. A weapon that was a close- equivalent to a modern beam rifle reached out and slaughtered ishtan as they first stood and later fled. A device on the creature’s belt emitted a painful field that made thought impossible and communication difficult, rendering the ishtan even more vulnerable, just another species standing alone against an alien invader.
A memory from Urid-Varg’s deepest layers bubbled up inside Daniel now.
He had built a device that would jam the mental abilities of the native species in his quest for power. It somehow screamed across a number of frequencies that they used, allowing him to defeat their greatest ability and leaving them nothing more than garden snakes.
The ishtan used tools, but were not a warlike species, like humans or Urid-Varg’s people. They fell before him one by one, until the destroyer found the creature he sought.
Daniel felt his breath catch at the image. Each of these specimens around him were between six and eight meters long, but the one Urid-Varg found and killed was a monster so much larger that it almost defied belief, perhaps nearly thirty meters. Enormous. Ancient.
Powerful beyond all others of their kind.
He watched Urid-Varg kill the ancient one with his beam weapon, and then chop his front fifth off and carry it away on a sled that floated on magnetic fields.
Because the others had rifled his own mind, Daniel’s memories of Urid-Varg were stirred up and near the surface. Perhaps they were driving him to remember things he didn’t even understand to look for.
Urid-Varg returned to a starship on the surface of the world, parked on a rocky outcropping against the risk of ice collapsing under the weight. Daniel did not recognize the ship, but it was not much larger than the four craft he had given Kathra to sell to the Trade Factor. Perhaps a yacht, except it was armed.
Urid-Varg retreated aboard his craft and lifted off, carrying his prize to orbit, where he took his tools and separated the ancient one’s skull into six pieces down the suture lines. Blue tongues. Blue blood. Pink fur.
Daniel watched himself reach into the gory mass inside the creature’s brain and pull something out, like a fisherman opening an oyster for a pearl. Urid-Varg washed the stone, tested it with some esoteric machine, and began laughing maniacally.
Daniel remembered walking to the front of his ship with the ancient one’s mind gem clenched in one fist, still laughing. Sitting in the command chair and targeting the planet below.
A strike of anti-matter bombs blasted the surface of the world like a giant asteroid impacting. Debris was thrown as high as the orbit where Urid-Varg could fly through them, listening to the patter of dust and glass sphericals bouncing off his hull.
Daniel opened Urid-Varg’s hand and recognized the gem. It was attached to his bodysuit right now, under his shirt.
Urid-Varg had killed most of the ishtan, after taking the mind gem from the ancient one to use as a weapon. After becoming a conqueror.
All of the ishtan, the voice corrected Daniel. There are no more egg-layers.
“You are immortal?” he gasped.
Close enough, the voice said. We have pledged to hunt the Destroyer and end his evil. That time is at hand.
“I am not him,” Daniel cried, but it was like trying to break down a brick wall with his breath, and he was no wolf.
His power must be destroyed.
Something like a mental fist came up and ended the conversation by punching him in the brain.
Part Three
Ishtan
Thirty-Nine
She waited with all the patience of a sixth child and second daughter, always last in line and told not to fidget as she waited her turn. A’Alhakoth paid attention to the noise around her, but there was no traffic in or out of this section of the station right now.
She wondered if the battle she expected to be playing out above her had driven all the casual witnesses off, like a sudden, heavy rain grounding wet and frustrated birds until it passed.
Erin had not moved for several minutes, according to the screen A’Alhakoth watched now. She was right at the edge of range, but the lack of overhead decks helped the signal, so it was mostly strong enough to be clear.
Ah, spoke to soon.
She watched Erin’s signal moving now. Retracing her steps presumably back to the lift in order to return to the main parts of the station. Except that there should be some signal, some message that indicated a change of plans or a failure to find that which they sought.
A’Alhakoth considered the powers that the human male Daniel manifested, and who might be able to hide from him. Had someone ambushed Erin and the other women and taken them?
Was it possible to ambush such people in reverse and liberate her new comrades? Daniel struck with the speed of thought. She would have perhaps a half second in which to act, before someone like him could capture her the same way.
Movement suggested other outcomes. That her friends were now prisoners, and headed somewhere, although A’Alhakoth could not, for the life of her, imagine where they might go. There was no place on the station any better, if you had prisoners such as these and wished to do something with them.
That suggested that they were leaving.
Did they have a ship parked somewhere? That made the most sense. Having captured Daniel and the comitatus warrior
s, whoever it was might want to leave the station to do whatever evil they had in mind.
She rose from her bench and made her way to the corridor out. Back to the human sections of the station.
Erin had parked her SkyCamel in the usual dock. It was unarmed, but equipped now with a valence drive. A’Alhakoth had no idea if SeekerStar was ready for deep space flight yet, and WinterStar was in the process of being emptied of all but a skeleton crew so it could be flown to a resting place and shut down for now.
At least until Kathra Omezi’s Mbaysey were large enough to need it. Hopefully, A’Alhakoth would have qualified to fly a Spectre by then, and could join the warriors protecting the entire tribe. She felt like a precocious child graduating early and setting out on some quest.
Again.
Erin’s signal was in the lift now, descending in such a way that the signal itself began to degrade. Too much steel in the way, especially as A’Alhakoth began to jog to the SkyCamel. She needed to be there and have completed her pre-flight before Erin and the others got wherever they were going. Plus, she could contact the Commander and let her know that something had gone wrong, so she could prepare to intercept whatever ship the aliens were using.
Briefly, she wondered if Daniel’s powers could protect the four women, if Kathra Omezi were to destroy the ship they were in and dump them into vacuum. That would hamper any rescue efforts.
It might come down to the newest warrior in the tribe. She gulped and began to jog, weaving her way in between pedestrians on the main concourse.
Time might be running out for everyone.
Faster than she expected, A’Alhakoth got to the SkyCamel and cycled herself aboard. She raced to the cockpit and pulled out the pre-flight checklist, handily kept on a clipboard nearby for someone still learning how to fly the class in order to remember everything.
A SkyCamel was a long box with engines on the sides. A cockpit with two seats, where Erin always flew and Daniel always rode next to her. Storage closet and privy just behind that, through an interior hatch, and then the cargo bay itself, stripped down to almost bare walls and lined with jumpseats a woman could pull down and strap herself into. Aft, there was a small engineering bay on one side, for accessing fuel tanks and various things, and an airlock on the left, as she faced rear.
