"Goddammit." Ortiz slammed her fist against the wall as a gaggle of passengers turned and fled from her detachment. She turned on Reza. "Every time passengers see you, they take off running the other way!"
"Just wait until we meet up with one of the other Marine detachments that are supposed to be here," Walker added, giving Reza a stony glare. "As soon as they set eyes on him, they'll take care of the problem for us."
"Then I will move forward on my own," Reza said. "You rescue the passengers, and I will try to slow down the advancing warriors."
Walker moved closer, raising the muzzle of her weapon. It wasn't quite pointed at Reza, but was close enough that the threat was clear. "So you can just switch sides and join them to kill the rest of us? I don't think so."
There was a collective murmur from the rest of the Marines, all save Eustus, who stood alone in defending his friend. "He would never do that! He—"
"Shut your mouth, little man," Stalin said in an icy voice. Unlike Walker, he made no pretense at all about where he was pointing his weapon: he leveled it at Eustus's heart. "You are even worse, a traitor who loves a traitor."
The dam Reza had built within himself to hold back the anger and resentment toward those who would never accept his honor finally broke and his blood flashed white hot with fury. His sword hissed through the air, the glittering blade slicing Stalin's assault rifle in half. As time contracted in Reza's mind, his body and sword moved with inhuman speed while the others reacted in slow motion. Pivoting to one side, he cut Walker's rifle in two, even as Stalin was just beginning to react to the destruction of his own weapon.
Moving with the grace and power of a fast flowing river, Reza turned and slashed, making his mark upon each of the Marines except for Eustus, Davis, and Ortiz.
When it was done, he allowed time to resume its normal flow.
Stalin stared at the remains of his rifle, the rear half held by his right hand, the front held in his left by the fore grip. A fountain of sparks exploded from the destroyed electronics and power pack.
"Shit!" Walker tossed the remains of her weapon to the deck as the power pack arced and flared. She looked up at Reza, her eyes now filled with fright. She found herself staring at the tip of his sword, which was a hair's breadth from her faceplate.
"I will tolerate no more." While the words were in Standard, he spoke not in the voice of a lowly private, but as a warrior priest of the Desh-Ka.
"Holy shit," Ortiz breathed. Taking her eyes from Reza. "Look at your name stencils."
Each Marine's name was painted on the front of his or her chest plate in black letters. Now those names bore a pair of deep horizontal slash marks that went halfway through the metal.
As one, they turned to stare at Reza.
"If I wanted to kill you, all of you, I easily could," he told them, lowering his sword. "I do not need to resort to treachery or subterfuge to do that. Those things are unknown among Her Children." His voice softened. "I did not return from the Empire to do you harm, but to offer my sword and my life in your service."
"Hey, why didn't I get some of those?" Davis's voice registered his indignation as he eyed the slashes on the other Marines' breast plates. He looked at Reza with a hurt expression. "I don't want to be left out."
Reza's lips turned up in a sad smile. Davis reminded him a great deal of his surrogate father, Wiley Hickock. With a few flicks of his wrist, he granted Davis's wish.
"That's better," Davis said happily.
"Okay," Ortiz said in an unsteady voice, "you made your point." While Marine officers technically weren't supposed to carry rifles, she always did, along with her sidearm. Now she handed her rifle to Walker and drew her pistol. With a look of disgust, Stalin threw the remains of his rifle to the deck and drew his own sidearm.
"But you're not just going rogue on me," Ortiz went on. "I want you to scout forward as fast as you can to that theater and hold off the enemy until we get there. I guess it goes without saying that you should avoid contact with the other Marines and don't scare the shit out of civilians if you can help it." She reached out and took his arm. "Then we all get off this tub together. I've had Marines die under my command, but I've never left one behind. Understood?"
Bowing his head, Reza said, "Yes, lieutenant."
"I'll go with him," Eustus volunteered. "He needs someone to watch his back."
"No, my friend," Reza told him, glad that Eustus had offered. You have more courage than you know, he thought. "Not this time. I can move faster on my own."
Turning to the deck plan, Ortiz focused the attention of the Marines on the way forward. "If I'm reading this right, we're going to have to go up two decks to the solarium, cross that and the shopping plaza, then drop down five decks to the theater. What do you think Reza?" She turned around. "Reza?"
He was gone.
"What the hell?" Walker gasped. "He was just standing right there!"
Eustus sighed. "Get used to it. He does that all the time."
***
Sai-Kel led her warriors aft through the angular passageways of the ship. She could not understand how the humans could build things that were so offensive to the senses. All around her were straight lines and sharp angles, utterly lacking in the grace found in even the simplest creations at the hands of the builders. This ship, and the others she had boarded in the past, had no sense of beauty or grace. One cannot expect such of soulless animals, she conceded.
Worse was the smell. Humans smelled bad enough, with their sour sweat and the strong perfumes they used to mask it, but their ships were worse. The stink of the humans mixed with the noxious chemical odors of the materials from which they made their ships sometimes caused Sai-Kel's nose to bleed. The worst, however, was the smell of their fear. It made her stomach roil with nausea. She was near to vomiting now, so overpowering was the reek in the passageways and compartments. She would far more have welcomed cloying smoke, which was now beginning to seep through the air ducts from the wreckage of the ship's engineering section.
Pausing in her advance, she nodded to a quartet of warriors who stood by, a pair on either side of the passageway near the endless rectangular doors along the passageways that led to sleeping quarters. One warrior of each pair sliced through the door's locking mechanism, the other warrior kicked it open, then the first stepped through. It was a process they all had performed many times in the past. The humans cowering within screamed in terror. Sai-Kel cringed, the sound clawing at her brain. The screams ended quickly, silenced by the swords of the warriors. Humans who did not stand and fight were killed quickly. Her Children did not delight in making animals suffer.
The warriors quickly returned from their bloody work, taking their places now at the rear of the phalanx attending her. Each would take her turn at the slaughter, which was part of Her will but was not something in which any of Her warriors took pride. No, they longed to find human warriors that would offer resistance, who would give battle that would glorify the Empress. Alas, aside from two humans who had given good accounts of themselves in hand to hand combat, all she and her warriors had thus far come upon in this ship were the weak and the helpless.
Raising a hand, indicating a halt, she looked at the ship's deck diagram, one of many that were affixed to the walls throughout human ships. She had always marveled that the animals could not find their way around without such things. Reaching out, she traced a path with an ebony talon toward a large compartment not far aft of her current location. Humans typically gathered when threatened, like terrified meat animals being hunted by a genoth, and she suspected that many would be there.
"Here." She tapped her finger on the compartment in the diagram. Other such compartments were spread throughout the ship, but this was the nearest. She could not read the alien letters that spelled Theater. "I tire of slaughtering animals," she told her First. "Let us go here and see what we might find."
***
Ortiz led her detachment into the solarium, which was made to look like the beach of a tropical island and was at least a hundred meters across. The Marines trudged across fine white sand, weaving their way between stands of palm trees, beach chairs, and tiki bars. Waves still lapped at the beach from the pool which, with the aid of holographic projection looked like an ocean that reached to the horizon. Looking up, she breathed a sigh of relief that the exterior shield was still in place over the enormous ceiling of clear panels overhead.
"Just imagine the view if that was open," Davis murmured in wonder as he gawked at their surroundings.
"Just imagine all this — and us — getting blown into vacuum through those clearskin panels," Walker chided. "The shield isn't armored, but it's a lot better protection than the glass."
"Cut the chatter," Ortiz growled.
Gunfire erupted off to their right, on the far side of the solarium, the distinctive sound of Marine pulse rifles hammering on full automatic.
Ortiz's Marines dropped to the sand or found cover.
"No contact!" Stalin called out. "I see nothing."
"There!" Eustus blurted as he saw distinctive black-clad figures pour from one of the other entrances to the solarium, focused on the Marines on the far side that were still blocked from his view.
"Where, dammit?" Ortiz snapped.
"Sorry, ma'am! Two o'clock, behind that restaurant."
"I don't see anything...wait, there they are!" Kreelans spilled out into her field of view. "Contact right!" Ortiz shouted. "Engage, but watch for friendlies!"
As one, the Marines opened fire, the energy bolts of the rifles tearing into the Kreelans who had no idea their flank was totally exposed. The detachment's two pulse guns chopped the restaurant to pieces, giving the other Marines a clear field of fire into the entire Kreelan formation that was now reeling on the sand-covered beach.
"Shit," someone hissed as more Kreelans boiled out from another entrance on this side of the restaurant.
"Get down!" Stalin bellowed.
Ortiz and the others who weren't already prone on the sand dove to the ground as a volley of the lethal alien throwing stars whistled overhead. "Cut 'em down!" she ordered as the newly arrived Kreelans charged their position.
Fire from the rifles and pulse guns raked the approaching enemy, but the Kreelans didn't make it easy. The warriors had an uncanny ability to dodge aside at the last moment, even while running across the powdery sand. Dozens went down, but dozens more continued to sprint toward Ortiz and her Marines.
"Grenades!" Ortiz ordered.
The Marines were already prepared. The word had barely escaped her lips when a dozen gray spheres sailed from her line toward the approaching enemy. Some reached their programmed proximity detonation height and exploded about three meters above the ground, while others were swatted away or sliced in half by warriors who leaped into the air, slashing at the incoming weapons with their swords.
"Wow!" Davis exclaimed, as if he were watching a circus act.
"Goddamned acrobats," Walker cursed as she swapped in a fresh power pack for her rifle. "Shit!" She dodged aside as a bolt from a pulse gun fired by the Marines on the far side missed the hundreds of intervening Kreelans to sail a centimeter above her head.
"This is not a good position," Stalin observed.
"Ya think?" Ortiz chewed her lip. "Our orders are search and rescue, not to get tied down in a shootout. Stalin, have first squad keep these bitches busy. Second and third squads, head for the forward exit." That was where they were originally headed when they'd stumbled into this firefight. "And keep your heads and asses down!"
The attention of the Kreelans was split by another detachment of Marines that suddenly appeared out of what must have been a maintenance access way in the middle of the holographic projection of the ocean horizon. The newcomers opened fire as they spread out over the narrow deck on that end of the pool.
"That's our cue," Ortiz said. "Go!"
The men and women of the second and third squads jumped up and scrabbled across the sand toward the ornate hatch that led forward while Stalin and first squad poured fire into the Kreelans. Over a hundred bodies littered the beach, yet more warriors continued to emerge into the kill zone.
"Second squad, cover!" Ortiz ordered as second and third squads reached relative safety. "First squad, move your asses!"
Stalin and the members of the first squad ran toward the others, with Stalin bringing up the rear. Just before he reached the exit, he slowed down, then stopped, his eyes fixed on the enemy.
"Stalin!" Ortiz ran out and grabbed his arm, intending to haul him out of harm's way.
"Look," he said, gesturing toward the enemy. "They are pulling back."
"What?" She looked at the Kreelans, and her mouth fell open in surprise. Stalin was right. They were retreating. But Kreelans never retreated, she reminded herself. Never. They either killed every human in sight or died trying.
The two other Marine detachments began brandishing their weapons in the air in celebration.
But something odd struck her about how the Kreelans were acting, beyond the fact that they never retreated. Normally when pulling back, some of the retreating forces were turned around to face the enemy, to offer at least token resistance, but none of the Kreelans were doing that. They'd simply turned their backs on the Marines and were running from the solarium as fast as their sandaled feet could carry them. "They're not running away from us," she said. "They're running toward something else."
"It's Reza."
Ortiz and Stalin turned to face Eustus, who wore a worried expression.
"They found out he's here."
***
Sai-Kel gestured for her warriors to slow as they approached the end of the passageway. Before them lay an enormous open plaza that, from the display of various wares, she took to be some sort of marketplace. Screams and human gunfire echoed down the passageway from somewhere beyond the plaza, but the plaza itself seemed deserted.
And yet it was not. Her senses twitched and her hand tightened on the handle of her sword as she slowly eased forward, her warriors right behind her. They can sense it, too, she thought as she picked up on the growing sense of anticipation building in their Bloodsong. But what was causing it?
Coming to the end of the passageway, she slid against the wall. The strange sensation was trilling in her blood, inexorably drawing her forward. Leaning forward, she peered around the corner and gasped at what she saw.
There, near the center of the plaza, stood a human clad in Kreelan armor. He stood tall, his legs shoulder width apart, the tip of his great sword resting on the deck, blade pointed downward, his hands clasped on its handle. His head was bowed, his eyes closed.
Around his neck was a Collar of Honor, and at his throat was the unmistakable rare blue of a genoth eyestone with the rune of the Desh-Ka inscribed upon it.
She pulled back, her eyes wide with surprise. "Reza," she whispered to herself in disbelief. Then she stepped out into full view.
The priest of the Desh-Ka opened his eyes and favored her with his gaze.
"Come," she said to her warriors, and together they filed out into the plaza. They quickly formed into ranks behind her, just as the tresh did at the kazhas. As one, they followed Sai-Kel's lead when she dropped to one knee and saluted. "We offer thee our humble greeting, priest of the Desh-Ka."
"May Her blessing be upon you," Reza replied as he returned her salute. "Do you seek the right of challenge?"
"What warrior worthy of the name would turn away from such an honor?"
"Come forth."
Getting to her feet, the strange sensation Sai-Kel had been feeling transformed into breathless elation. She had no expectation that she would survive personal combat with Reza, but she could think of no greater honor for the Empress than to die by his hand.
She approached him, he who was the consort of Esah-Zhurah, and again knelt. The blade of his sword glittered before her eyes.
"Rise, Sai-Kel," he told her. They had never before met in the flesh, but he would know her name as he would any of Her Children by the first five pendants, the Five Stars, that hung from her collar. After she had gotten to her feet, he said, "I would ask you of my love, Esah-Zhurah. Do you...do you know how she fares?"
His question brought on a wave of sadness. "She mourns thee, my priest," Sai-Kel told him. "She mourns thy loss now as much as she did the day you left us. Hers is a lonely, tragic voice in the Bloodsong that has touched us all." She dared to raise her eyes to meet his. "I grieve for thee, and for her. So do all of Her Children."
"It was Her will," Reza whispered. "I thank you." Taking a deep breath and clearing the expression of sadness from his face, he said, "Tell your warriors that in this challenge I will use none of the powers given me by the Crystal of Souls. It will be sword against sword, claw against claw, warrior against warrior."
Sai-Kel's mouth dropped open in wonder. For a priest or priestess to offer such a condition in combat was unheard of. Dying by the hand of a priest of the Desh-Ka was a wondrous honor. But to kill one in a ritual challenge would be something unheard of in the Books of Time. Granted, Reza could still probably kill every one of her warriors easily without the powers of the Desh-Ka, but it gave them a chance, albeit slight, of victory. "You would do this...for us?"
"I do it to honor Her," Reza said. He reached out to put a hand gently on her shoulder. "Should I fall, I would ask thee to return my weapons and my collar to my love."
Bowing her head, feeling as if the skin beneath the armor where he held his hand was burning, she said, "So it has been said, so shall it be done."
"My thanks, warrior." He took his hand away and stepped back, hefting his sword in one hand.
They waited as the other warriors circled around them, forming a makeshift arena.
Then Reza said, "Let us begin."
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Last updated 09/01/2016 08:48 EST