In Her Name: The Last War (124 page)

No, she was afraid of what would come after. Or, more precisely, of what might not. To die with honor meant basking in the Afterlife, to take one’s place among the spirits who dwelled beyond death in the love of the Empress. 

To die without honor, to perish in disgrace, meant that one’s soul would be cast into eternal darkness beyond Her love, without hope of redemption. From birth, Her Children sensed the Bloodsong in their veins, an emotional bond with the Empress that was just as real as the blood in their bodies. It was as natural to Her Children as taking a breath. 

But that bond could be broken, the lifeline to the river of the Bloodsong severed, both in life and in death. It was rare, yet it did happen. No mere warrior could mete out such a punishment. Only the Empress had that power...and the high priestesses such as Ku’ar-Marekh.

Ri’al-Hagir knelt now before the cold-hearted priestess of the Nyur-A’il, a silent prayer to the Empress on her lips.

“I entrusted you with a simple matter.” Ku’ar-Marekh’s voice was, as always, empty of all emotion. 

Shivering at the words, Ri’al-Hagir braced herself for the eternal agony that would soon befall her. She had been summoned moments earlier by Ku’ar-Marekh to the
Kalai-Il
, the place of atonement that the warriors had been struggling mightily to complete. The sun had long since given its place to the stars, and the great stone edifice was lit by a ring of torches, their orange light flickering in the darkness.

Were it any other than Ku’ar-Marekh, Ri’al-Hagir would have feared only the pain of the lash up on the
Kalai-Il
. Agonizing and potentially lethal as it was, it was a mortal pain. Even if her body died, her spirit would live on.

Yet, Ri’al-Hagir knew that her priestess had never inflicted punishment to any warriors on the
Kalai-Il
. She had either tortured them to death with her powers, or severed their bonds to the Bloodsong. 

She could easily accept the former, but greatly feared the latter. 

“My life is yours, my priestess,” Ri’al-Hagir said, forcing strength into her voice through the fear in her heart. “The
Kalai-Il
is not yet finished as you had commanded. I offer no excuse.” 

In fact, the delay had been from having to quarry the stones farther away than they had expected. Transporting them to this place using the ancient ways, as custom demanded, had taken more time. The builder caste could have created this monument to Kreelan discipline in but moments, but that was not the Way of their race. The
Kalai-Il
was found on every world of the Empire, and in all of the great warships built in the last fifty millennia. It was built only by the hands of Her Children, using ingenuity and backbreaking labor. For that was the Way, as it had been even before the Empire had been founded a hundred thousand cycles before.

The priestess stood over her, Ku’ar-Marekh’s right hand holding the hilt of her sword. “I do not take you to task for the
Kalai-Il.
It is of the humans that I speak.”

This so surprised Ri’al-Hagir that she involuntarily glanced up at the priestess, then quickly cast her eyes down again. “I do not understand, my priestess.”

“Behold.” Ku’ar-Marekh placed a hand on the braids of Ri’al-Hagir’s raven hair.

Ri’al-Hagir gasped as she felt herself flying from the
Kalai-Il
to the woods where a great encampment had been built for the warriors streaming here, and the corrals where the humans were being kept. 

Not intending any cruelty to the humans, the corrals were nonetheless horrific affairs. Thousands of the human animals had been crammed into the pens, and more were on the way. Many hundreds of those who had been strong enough to survive the march here, a winnowing process to eliminate those unworthy to fight in the arenas, had died, trampled to death by their fellow animals or from lack of food and water. 

The stench of their waste and wretchedness reached a full league here to the
Kalai-Il
. In what Ri’al-Hagir knew was the view of the priestess’s second sight that she somehow was sharing, the smell was unbearable, and she could sense through the powerful Bloodsong of the priestess how the warriors guarding the animals suffered their duties.

“We do not treat our food animals in such a fashion, let alone those we would face in the arena or in open battle.” Ku’ar-Marekh released Ri’al-Hagir, bringing the warrior back to the here and now atop the
Kalai-Il
. “There are millions of the aliens left on this world, and I summoned more warriors here to challenge them and bring glory to the Empress. And this is what they would find when the fleet bearing them arrives on the morrow.”

Ku’ar-Marekh paused. Ri’al-Hagir could feel a tingling sensation around her heart, and she shivered in fear.

“The Way of our people is difficult, yet we do not revel in cruelty. We have dishonored Her and ourselves by letting humans we have captured, especially those who survived the difficult trek to this place, die needlessly and in such a fashion, without the chance to fight,” Ku’ar-Marekh continued. “What would I tell your sisters when they arrive and see this? What would I tell the Empress? This is not Her will.”

 Ri’al-Hagir hung her head low, clenching her fists so tightly that her talons drew blood from her palms. “I give my life in dishonor,” she whispered, hoping that the priestess would choose to end her life with a blade, and not with the other powers that dwelt within her.

Ku’ar-Marekh’s sword sang from its scabbard, moving too quickly to see as it severed the first braid of Ri’al-Hagir’s hair. The braids of Her Children were not merely a form of style or ornamentation, but formed a very tangible bond with the Empress. The first braid was the key, for it linked the owner’s spirit with the Bloodsong. Were it severed, the bearer might survive physically, but would be doomed upon death to an eternity of darkness beyond Her love. 

Ri’al-Hagir cried out as the braid parted, but her voice died as Ku’ar-Marekh’s blade flashed again, slicing through the warrior’s neck. The severed head fell to the dais of the
Kalai-Il
with a wet thud, and Ri’al-Hagir’s body collapsed on top of it in a clatter of metal on stone. 

The priestess could sense the sudden silence of her First’s Bloodsong as she was carried away into the depths of the cold darkness of eternity. It brought her no satisfaction, but honor had been satisfied.

Ku’ar-Marekh calmly flicked the blood from her blade and slid it back into its scabbard. The warriors around her knelt low to the ground, their left fists over their right breasts in salute. They were terrified.

“Place her body in the forest as a feast for the wild animals,” Ku’ar-Marekh ordered. “Then make right what she allowed to go wrong, or you shall suffer the same fate.”

As she strode down the wide steps of the
Kalai-Il
, the warriors moved quickly to obey.

* * *

Allison pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle an involuntary gasp as the strange warrior with the dead eyes killed one of her own warriors on the huge stone platform they’d been building. 

“What is it?” Valentina whispered from behind her. They’d made better time getting into town than Valentina had expected. The frequent Kreelan hunting parties that had been wandering across the countryside earlier had vanished, and Valentina suspected they were all congregating for the slaughter that must soon be about to start for the prisoners being marched into Breakwater.

“She killed one of them!” Allison hissed. “Cut her head right off!”

“A prisoner?” Valentina sidled up beside Allison where the girl crouched near the blasted-out front window.

“No.” Allison shook her head and pointed to where the strange warrior was now walking down from the stone platform. “One of the other warriors. It looked like they were talking for a while, with the other one kneeling. Then Dead Eyes just whipped out her sword and lopped the other one’s head off.”

“Well,” Valentina said grimly, “I guess that’s one less that we have to kill ourselves.”

“How can they do that, Valentina? How could they just...kill one another like that?”

“Don’t think that humans haven’t done the same to one another, and worse.” Valentina fought to keep a host of unpleasant memories from surfacing. “Let’s just be thankful that our friend there is occupied with her own problems instead of coming after us.”

“I guess so.” Allison watched the warrior disappear from view behind the stone. As she did, the other warriors around her ran to take the body away, then they all disappeared down the street that led toward the woods on the south side of town where the human prisoners were being taken.

In an effort to deflect Allison’s thoughts, Valentina said, “You picked a good place here. It’ll take me a while to put something together, but I think we’ve got all the parts for both a radio and a comm link.”

“What’s a radio?” Allison asked, finally turning from the window. 

“Something people used to use a long time ago to talk across distances, before we had comm links. In a way they’re the same sort of thing, just that what we have nowadays can carry a lot more information a lot farther.”

“Then why don’t we just use that?”

“Because sometimes the Kreelans don’t let us. We don’t know how they do it, but they can make it stop working. They don’t do it all the time, but when they do, it’s usually at the worst possible moment.”

“But they don’t bother the radio thing?”

“No, at least not so far as anyone knows. So I want to make sure we have both, just in case.” Patting Allison on the shoulder, she said, “I’ve got just a couple more things to find, then we’ll get out of here.”

“Okay.”

Allison continued to watch, peering out from the corner of the window and keeping as much of her face concealed as possible. The flickering fire from torches illuminated all five of the big rings, arenas, Valentina had called them, and the big stone thing. The sight made her shiver, and she hoped that Valentina would finish soon. She hated just sitting here.

She looked up at the growing roar of an approaching ship, and followed it as it lowered into the woods on the far side of town. Valentina said that while she wasn’t sure, she suspected it probably carried more human prisoners. The ships had been coming about every fifteen minutes since Mills had seen the first one a few hours ago. 

“Let’s go,” Valentina whispered from behind her, and Allison nearly jumped out of her skin. 

“It’s about time.” 

Together, they crept out the back of the store and through the dark, deserted streets as yet another ship roared overhead.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

“Shit.” Danielson looked up, wondering if the children had heard him curse. It had taken him four hours of frustrating labor to try and piece together the device from the parts and tools Valentina had brought back, while she focused on trying to build a radio. 

Her task had been just as challenging, as it was difficult to put together a primitive device like a radio with modern technology.

“What’s wrong?” Steph had been helping Danielson. She didn’t have the technical knowledge to build the equipment, but she could provide a pair of extra hands. 

“There’s nothing.” Danielson glared at the fist-sized collection of electronic components he had managed to fuse together. Two lights glowed on a small panel that was connected to the device. One was green, the other was red. Pointing to the green one, he said, “The thing’s broadcasting. I can tell that much. But it’s not connecting to anything, not even our headsets.” He held up one of the headsets they’d been wearing. They hadn’t had to use them much since they jumped down to the planet’s surface, as they’d been together most of the time and within easy talking distance.

“Is it just not synchronizing?” Valentina picked up her own headset and working the tiny controls. 

“No,” he told her, shaking his head. “Those have stopped working, too. The hardware checks out okay, but there’s no carrier signal for them to pick up. The network’s just gone.”

“He’s right.” Steph was looking at her vidcam. While she hadn’t connected it to the team’s net, it could see the headset nodes. Now it couldn’t. “The Kreelans must have done whatever they do to kill our comm and data links.”

“Well, I guess that’s that for this piece of crap.” Danielson shoved the makeshift comm unit away from him, a look of utter disgust on his face.

“How do they do that?” Steph wondered quietly.

“I think the question we should be asking is why they did it now?” Valentina frowned. “I just spoke to Mills a few minutes ago on my headset.”

“Who the hell knows?” Danielson snapped. “I sure hope you had better luck than I did.”

“Let’s find out.” Valentina tapped a few more commands into a small console that she had connected to her own collection of oddball bits and pieces of tech from the gadget store. “Let me have that, would you?” She pointed to a connector attached to the end of a cable that she had run outside the shelter to a wire antenna outside. Steph handed it to her, and Valentina plugged the connector into the makeshift radio.

They were rewarded with the sound of static from the small speaker unit. Valentina touched a control on the console, and the static disappeared.

“I programmed in the alternate radio frequencies we were given” she explained. “All the teams were issued radio beacons. If the other teams have their beacons on, we should be able to pick them up.”

“We don’t have a beacon, do we?” Steph asked.

“No,” Danielson answered bitterly. “It went down with the ship, along with most of our other stuff.”

They all stared at the speaker, waiting to hear something. 

“What are we listening for?” Steph whispered.

“Bursts of static,” Valentina answered, keeping her eyes glued to the console. “It won’t sound like anything to us, but I built in a decoder that will break out any transmissions. The beacons are just to let other teams know you’re still on the mission. If we pick up a beacon and respond, we’ll be patched through to the team and be able to talk to them.”