"Lord of All," Eustus gasped as a white light, bright as any sun, speared through the clear view panels in the flex-dock as the Venetian Star exploded. The faceplates of the Marines' helmets automatically darkened to keep them from being blinded, but the civilians weren't so lucky. The captain had already begun to rotate Chasseur about her long axis to put the mass of the ship between the paper-thin walls of the flex-dock and the expanding sphere of white hot debris. Eustus cringed as he saw a cloud of fragments whiz through the empty space where the flex-dock had been just a moment before, and hot tears welled in his eyes as he thought of Reza. He's gone. But Eustus had no time now to grieve.
"Hurry!" Ortiz bellowed over the radio and her suit's PA. "Get them aboard!"
While her idea of vacuuming the survivors into the destroyer was working, it wasn't working fast enough. The dock had now collapsed along the destroyer's flank as the ship maneuvered, and a huge strain was being placed on the seam where the docking ring attached to the ship's airlock.
"Come on," Eustus said, grabbing a sobbing passenger, whose hands were covering her flash-blinded eyes. Eustus propelled her forward with one hand while he held onto one of the handhold loops with the other. The other Marines followed his lead, forming a fire brigade of sorts to fling the remaining passengers toward the airlock.
Looking up at a loud popping sound, Eustus saw the telltale vapor stream from air that was venting from a tear in the dock where it met the airlock, courtesy of a fragment of debris that had ricocheted off one of the ship's gun turrets. The good news was that it made more of a pressure differential in the direction of the ship to help move the remaining passengers along. The bad news, on the other hand, was all too obvious.
"Go on, Camden," Ortiz said after an agonizingly long time of moving the passengers forward, putting her hand on his shoulder as she tossed one last civilian forward. "We're the last ones in this conga line. Move your ass!"
He didn't need any further prompting. Pulling himself forward with the handhold loop, he went sailing behind the last passenger, pausing at the next handhold long enough to turn and make sure Ortiz was following behind him.
"You stop again and I'm going to shoot you!" she shouted. Yanking him free of the handhold as she sailed by, the two of them caromed toward the airlock, where Stalin and Davis were now waiting, their boots magnetically locked to the deck and their arms held out to assist. The inner door had been closed to protect the passengers and other Marines, who were now safely inside the ship.
Stalin grabbed Ortiz and hauled her in, and Davis had a hold of Eustus's arm when the seam of the flex-dock finally gave way. Even though the pressure in the dock had been reduced dramatically, the resulting decompression into the near-perfect vacuum of space was still explosive. Eustus screamed as Davis lost his grip and Eustus was blown through the hole...
...or would have been, had not Reza appeared right between the two men. One of his hands latched onto the armor of Davis's upper arm, the gleaming talons of Reza's armored gauntlets sinking into the metal, while the other grabbed Eustus's wrist in an unyielding grip. Together, Davis, Stalin, and Ortiz managed to haul the two of them back into the lock before Stalin hit the button to close the outer door. He turned around and took a long look at Reza in the near-vacuum in the lock. Reza, acting as if the dangerously low pressure had no effect on him, got to his feet and calmly stared back.
"Pressurize the lock!" Ortiz ordered, but Stalin made no move to do so. Shoving past him, she slammed her palm down on the appropriate control, releasing a hissing torrent of air that quickly brought the lock up to pressure. She grabbed Stalin's arm. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
Without taking his eyes from Reza, he grabbed her combat harness and flung her into Eustus and Davis, who were both dumbstruck by Reza's appearance.
Before Stalin could move another muscle, the tip of Reza's dagger was pressing against Stalin's chest armor, right over his heart.
With a feral grin, Stalin grabbed Reza's wrist and pulled it toward him, pressing the dagger harder against his chest armor. The tip of the blade scored the tough metal, then began to sink in.
"Go ahead," Stalin taunted. "Kill me with your shiny knife. But you know this is not how you want it. We are alike, you and I, more than the others can understand. When the time comes, we will see who is the better killer in the time honored way."
"That's enough!" Ortiz shouted after Eustus and Davis helped her back to her feet. She took hold of the hand Stalin had clamped on Reza's wrist. "Let go! That's an order, staff sergeant!"
Stalin ignored her.
Turning to Reza, she dropped her hands away from Stalin's and said, "Back off. Now."
Bowing his head, Reza stepped back, easily snapping his hand free of Stalin's grip before sheathing his dagger.
"He assaulted you," Reza said to Ortiz. "Do you wish me to accompany him to the brig?"
"No," Ortiz said in a tired voice as she took off her helmet, glad to be free of its confinement. With a sharp look at Stalin, she said, "You and I will sort this out later." She turned back to Reza. "I don't need someone in Kreelan armor frogmarching my senior NCO through a bunch of scared civvies and the ship's crew. And right now I have a bigger concern: not that Eustus is complaining, I'm sure, since you saved his life, but just how the hell did you get here from the Venetian Star?" She took a step closer. "What the hell are you?"
Reza briefly thought of telling her exactly what he was. I am a warrior priest of the Desh-Ka, he could have said. In the world where he had become a man, a warrior, had such words needed to be spoken, they would have told any among those who lived across the ten thousand suns of the Empire exactly what he was, and they would have understood all that it implied. But his human kin had no frame of reference. He was the most powerful warrior who had ever lived among humankind in all its history, with abilities they could only comprehend as magic. Yet, how could he say such a thing and have Ortiz and the others believe that it was anything more than boundless hubris? It probably didn't matter, in any event: he could think of no explanation that would make any more sense, that would be accepted any easier, than the truth.
"The Kreelans must have had a teleportation device with them," Eustus blurted, just as Reza was opening his mouth to tell Ortiz that he was a Kreelan warrior priest. "I mean, we've known since the first contact encounter that they can do all kinds of things we can't explain, right? They just choose not to most of the time. The warriors aboard the ship must have had some sort of gadget that sent him back to us."
"Wow," Davis breathed, his eyes wide with wonder. Stalin said nothing, but narrowed his eyes in consideration as he continued to stare at Reza.
"I don't remember asking you, Camden," Ortiz snapped, thankful that this discussion was taking place in the relative privacy of the airlock, rather than among the entire detachment or in front of a bunch of civilians. As crazy as Camden's idea was, she couldn't think of any better explanation. Reza had appeared right before her eyes, and that had scared the shit out of her for any number of reasons. To Reza, she said, "Is this true? Does the enemy have such technology?"
"Yes," he said. He didn't think it prudent to tell her that it wasn't any technology as humans understood it, but was innate to his body and mind. "But I know nothing of how this...device...functions." That much was true.
"You spoke of this to those who debriefed you when you returned to the Confederation?" Stalin asked.
Reza nodded. "Yes. That was the...mechanism...used to banish me from the Empire."
Stalin cocked his head to one side. "And why did they save you now, after you butchered so many?"
"Because I wished it." Reza was uncomfortable with so much as bending the truth, as the warriors aboard the Venetian Star had nothing to do with his returning to the other Marines. In this case, however, he rationalized that it was an answer that was truthful enough.
"If their warriors will just do whatever you ask," Stalin asked him in an acid tone, "why do you not tell them to surrender, or take their own lives?"
"I could not ask them to do anything that goes against their Way," Reza said. "More than that, I cannot — and will not — say. If you have further concerns, I would direct you to Fleet Admiral L'Houillier."
"Yeah, whatever," Ortiz said in a tired voice. "I can't get my brain around this and it's giving me a headache. Stalin, Davis, go round up the rest of our detachment and find out what's to become of us now that Leander's gone. Camden, find Gard here a uniform that'll fit and a bag he can toss his Kreelan stuff into. He and I will stay out of sight here until you get back."
"Yes, ma'am," Eustus said as he made to open the inner door of the lock, with Davis and Stalin behind him.
Ortiz pushed Reza to one side and stood in front of him, hoping to block him from view of anyone still in the passageway beyond.
The door hissed open and the three men stepped out. Ortiz was surprised that the civilians were nowhere in sight and the passageway was empty. Loud voices, dozens of them, could be heard from somewhere down the passageway, however.
She hit the button to close the door again after the others had stepped out, then she collapsed to her knees.
"Lieutenant!" Reza knelt down before her, taking Ortiz by the arms and holding her steady.
"All those people," she whispered as tears began to roll down her cheeks. She was trembling violently. "All those poor people I killed when Leander was hit." She looked up into his eyes. "How can I ever make up for that?" Looking away, she whispered, "You don't even know what I'm talking about. You weren't there."
"I saw what happened," he told her. Ortiz looked up at him, disbelief plain in her eyes. "I can see beyond what my eyes show me," Reza explained softly. "You ordered the lock closed when the Leander was hit. Stalin shot the passengers blocking the airlock and closed the door, then the passengers in the flex-dock died when it ruptured."
"You really saw all that?"
"As if I were standing there beside you."
She gulped and was quiet a moment. Then she asked, "Could you have used the teleportation device Camden was talking about to reach them?"
Reza nodded. "Yes, but I could not have saved them all."
"But you could have saved a few? Even just one?"
"Yes, but there would have been a price to be paid."
"What the hell does that mean?"
Reza sighed. "If I had fled the...contest to save them, the warriors I was holding at bay would have been free to roam the ship, and could easily have blocked your escape with the remaining survivors."
"But you could've just fought them again!" she cried, hammering one of her fists on his breast plate.
Gently but firmly wrapping his hand around hers, he kept her fist pressed against his chest. "It is not so simple," he explained. "There are...rules that must be obeyed. I could not simply run from one ritual combat and begin another at my whim. It would have been a terrible dishonor. If I had to face the warriors again, it would have been on their terms. " He did not add that his own life in that case would have been forfeit. To flee a Challenge was a dreadful disgrace for a warrior, even a priest, that would have earned him a sentence of death. "I would have faced such dishonor to save your life, for I vowed to protect you, and to break that vow would be an even greater dishonor."
Ortiz shook her head, rolling her eyes in a combination of disbelief and disgust. "So, if I had been about to get hurt or killed, you would've popped out of thin air to save me, dishonor or not?"
Reza nodded.
"You stupid bastard," she rasped, pulling her hand away and getting unsteadily to her feet. "Next time save someone who's innocent, someone worth saving, not me. I release you from your stupid vow. I don't want your damn protection if it comes at that high a price."
Burning with shame, Reza bowed his head.
The inner door suddenly opened to reveal Eustus bearing a duffel stuffed with regulation gear for Reza to wear.
"Good timing," Ortiz snapped as she stalked out, pausing just long enough to slap the control to close the door behind her.
Eustus stood there, uncertain, as Reza remained on his knees, head bowed. "You okay?"
After a moment, Reza nodded slowly. "I am fine," he said in a soft voice, but Eustus couldn't miss the track of a single tear running down Reza's cheek below the scar over his left eye. Eustus put a hand on his friend's armored shoulder for a moment.
Reza offered him a weak smile of thanks as he got to his feet. Eustus pulled a new Marine uniform from the bag as Reza began to strip away his Kreelan armor.
***
Several hours after their rescue from the doomed starliner, Chasseur transferred the rescued passengers to a support ship and Ortiz's detachment to the assault carrier Yavuz, where they were assigned to an empty platoon bay. The former occupants, along with half the battalion Yavuz normally carried, had been wiped out in an earlier battle and had yet to be replaced.
"Here's the deal," Ortiz said in an exhausted voice as her Marines gathered around. She had just returned from a brief and frosty meeting with the acting battalion commander, a jumped-up captain who had looked at her as if she were a cockroach. "We're being chopped to the Yavuz's Marine detachment for now. As you can see," she waved around to the empty bay, festooned with the personal effects of the previous occupants, "they have some spare bunks for us. But this isn't a Red Legion outfit, so they'll be transferring us off at the soonest possible opportunity."
That was met with a round of hoots and catcalls. While the Legion was looked upon by outsiders as the Corps' garbage dump, those who wore its patch on their shoulder and had managed to survive their first battle often looked upon their parent unit with perverse pride, and upon "regular Marines" with more than a little disdain.
"We obviously lost all our personal effects, a couple weapons, and extra gear," she continued, "so the first order of business is going to be sending a detail to the battalion quartermaster to top off our weapons, ammo, and equipment."
"What if they give us a cold shoulder?" Castle asked.
Ortiz snorted. "Then do what you do best, Castle. Hustle it for us. But I want us combat ready by the turn of the dog watch." She waved around them. "Box up the personal effects of the Marines who were here and take them with you. Maybe that'll help grease the skids." She didn't add that anything they might find that would be of use or special interest, especially contraband, was subject to the finders-keepers rule. "That's all I have for now. Any questions?"
There were none.
"That's it, then." As Stalin took over to oversee the execution of her orders, Ortiz retreated to her tiny cabin near the entrance to the bay, catching sight of the name plate on the door that read 2LT WILL BENSON. After closing the door and shutting the world away, she sat down on Benson's bed, which had been made to boot camp standards before he had gone off to die. A holo of a smiling young woman with two babies in her arms looked out at her from the tiny fold-down desk. "Dear Mrs. Benson," Ortiz whispered, "I regret to inform you..." Her voice tapered off as she leaned back against the bulkhead, closing her eyes. But all she could see were the images of helpless civilians being cut down by Stalin's rifle, and so many more blown into space as the flex-dock to Leander gave way.
She bit off her cry as she snapped awake, the images of all those she'd killed slowly, reluctantly fading away as her eyes darted around the cramped cabin. Her uniform was damp with sweat and her hands were shaking.
"Lord of All," she whispered.
Someone knocked on the door, and she realized that's what had awakened her from the nightmare. "Come," she said in a shaky voice, thankful for the interruption and wondering if she'd ever be able to sleep again.
The door opened. It was Stalin. "Everything is done, lieutenant," he reported, his eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at her. "Did you want to talk about what happened in the airlock?"
She laughed, or tried to, but it caught in her throat and died. "Would it make any difference?" She waved a hand before he could answer. "Never mind. That was a rhetorical question. Nothing makes any goddamn difference."
The big man came to stand close beside her, one of his knees brushing her leg, and Ortiz suddenly wondered if this was it, if Stalin was finally going to rape or kill his little pet, his toy. Then she wondered if she really cared. Maybe you shouldn't have been so quick to throw away Reza's protection, she thought.
Reaching into his pocket, Stalin withdrew a glass bottle about the size of his palm that contained a clear liquid and tossed it on the bed beside her. Vodka.
"You need sleep, lieutenant," he said. Then he turned on his heel and left.
Ortiz eyed the bottle for a long time before she reached out and picked it up. Unscrewing the cap, she put it to her lips and began to drink.
***
Later, alone in the tiny cabin in the platoon bay that was reserved for the senior NCO, opposite Ortiz's cabin, Stalin lay in his bunk and brooded about something he and the others had seen aboard the Venetian Star: the sixty-odd Kreelan warriors that Gard claimed to have killed. While Stalin very much wanted to, he did not doubt Gard's claim was true. But how could Gard have struck down so many in the relatively short time Leander's Marines had been aboard the starliner? Stalin had more experience in hand to hand combat than most people in the entire Confederation, and he could not imagine being able to kill that many armed and skilled opponents in the amount of time Gard had. A handful, yes, but sixty or more? No. That would be impossible for any mortal man.
That thought brought him to something that the others, including Ortiz, had not yet realized. Stalin understood the significance of the cyan rune on Reza's breastplate and on the oval blue stone affixed to his collar: such insignia had been worn only by a small number of very special Kreelan warriors encountered over the course of the war. The rare accounts of battles involving these warriors had generally been dismissed as having been fabricated, even in cases where video documentation supported the testimony of eyewitnesses, and few believed the recorded feats of these warriors could possibly be true. For to believe that was to believe in dark magic, in madness.
Stalin, too, had always doubted those reports. Unlike most of his colleagues, however, he had a passion for studying his enemy that rivaled that for ridiculing God with the holy verses he posted every day, and he knew that the markings on Kreelan breast plates and collars were far more special than most believed. After getting the platoon settled in, Stalin had spent some time in the ship's library before returning to his quarters to contemplate his findings. Letting out a sigh, he picked up one of the printouts he had made from his research and studied it. It was a drawing that dated back to the first contact encounter with the Kreelans, made by the legendary then-Midshipman Ichiro Sato. He gave the long-dead admiral credit for being a passably good artist, for Sato's hand-drawn depiction of the warrior was true to form. In this case, he had also drawn the silhouette of a one point eight meter tall man beside the mysterious Kreelan to show just how big she was. But what intrigued Stalin was the rune on her breastplate: the design was the exact same as that adorning Gard's chest armor.
"What are the odds?" he asked himself in Georgian. "And what does it mean?"
He slid the drawing and the other pages of information under his pillow when a knock came at his door.
A voice came through the door. "It's Walker."
"Come."
She came in and closed the door behind her. It was after lights out, but neither Ortiz nor Stalin ever enforced the rule. The men and women in their platoon were veteran Marines of the Red Legion, not preschoolers.
"What do you want?" Stalin said, wondering if she'd come for words or something more physical. The two of them had shared both during their long time together.
"Something has to be done," she said in a low voice. "That son of a bitch has Ortiz and most of the others hoodwinked with his parlor tricks."
Stalin granted her a noncommittal grunt. Walker was so blinded by hate fueled by the loss of her family that she would never consider the possibility that what Gard had told them about his intentions upon returning to the Confederation was true. On the other hand, Stalin agreed that something had to be done, but for entirely different reasons.
"Something will be," he told her.
"When?"
He shrugged. "Soon. Perhaps sooner if..."
His voice trailed off and he smiled as she stripped out of her clothes and joined him in his bunk.
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Updated on 10/11/2016 at 12:10PM