In Her Name: The Last War (63 page)

Walking beside him, Stephanie held an exquisitely wrapped gift. She and Sato had spent nearly an hour getting the wrapping just so. She had thought it a fun but ultimately wasteful use of time, until he explained how important the wrapping of a gift was in Nagano’s culture, and that it was as important as the gift itself. 

And the gift? Two fresh pineapples in a box. She had laughed at him when he had first suggested it, but he was completely serious. “Listen, I know you don’t believe this,” he had told her, “but this is perfect! She absolutely loves pineapple, and they’re almost impossible to get on Nagano. My uncle managed to get some a few times - that’s where she first tasted it - but he must have paid a fortune.” 

“She,” of course, was his mother, whom he hadn’t seen since he had left for the Terran Naval Academy. Steph had suggested some gorgeous jewelry, but he only shook his head. “She doesn’t wear any.” It was hard for Steph to conceive of any woman not wanting to wear jewelry, but she had let it ride and trusted Ichiro’s advice. He hadn’t steered her wrong yet.

A few weeks before, they had both been at the commissioning of the first of the new shipyards that were being built in Earth orbit, where the keels of a dozen new warships were being laid down in a fast-build program that would have the new ships undergoing their first space trials in three months. One of them, the heavy cruiser
Yura
, would be Ichiro’s to command. 

The ceremony had been held on Africa Station, which, like the other orbital transfer points, was being radically enlarged to accommodate more traffic. While most of the attention had been riveted on the massive yards and the ships that were even now beginning to take shape, Sato had spent a considerable part of the ceremony staring out at the hulk of the
Aurora
, which rode quietly at anchor in the original space dock. The Navy had decided that she would never sail again, and would eventually be broken up. Part of him would have exchanged his new heavy cruiser for the old
Aurora
in an instant; another part was horrified at the thought of ever again setting foot on her decks.

Despite the maudlin thoughts about his old ship amid the martial pomp of the commissioning ceremony for the shipyards, the gathering on Africa Station was also one of joy: to a great deal of well-wishing and cat-calling, he and Steph announced their engagement and plans to marry. After returning from Keran, they quickly came to the conclusion that they were meant for each other. With him in command of a warship and her helping the government get people behind the formation of the Confederation, their married life would be difficult, to say the least. But they were determined to make it work. They knew now that the universe was not a hospitable place, and it was an immense comfort just knowing that they had each other to love and hold onto.

They arrived at the drab apartment building and rode up the cramped elevator to the fifteenth floor. Everything here was clean, almost antiseptic in appearance. And quiet. Their footsteps echoed as they walked down the tiled hall until they reached a certain door.

Looking one last time at Steph, who only nodded, Ichiro pressed the illuminated button that would let the occupants know they had visitors.

After a brief moment, the door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman of Japanese descent, not so different in appearance from a million others in the city. Physically she was still in the prime of beauty for those of her age, her face showing few wrinkles and only faint traces of gray in her otherwise lush raven hair. But her expression and eyes were blank, her thoughts and emotions carefully concealed, a defense mechanism developed over a lifetime of emotional and physical abuse.

“Greetings, Mother,” Ichiro said in Japanese, bowing his head.

For a moment, she said nothing, did nothing. She made no reaction at all. Then the veneer that had been her shield against the pain of her life, built up over decades, suddenly shattered and fell away. 

In that moment, she did what no self-respecting Nagano woman, even one who had been widowed only a week before when her hated husband had died of a burst aneurysm, would ever have admitted to: she burst into tears and took her only son in her arms.

LEGEND OF THE SWORD

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Tesh-Dar, high warrior priestess of the Desh-Ka, strode quietly along the paths of the Imperial Garden. Protected by a great crystalline dome that reached far into the airless sky of the Empress Moon, the stones that made up the ages-old walkways had come from every planet touched by the Empire. The paths wove their way in a carefully designed pattern for leagues: had Tesh-Dar been of a mind and had the luxury of time, she could have wandered in contemplative peace for an entire cycle and still not fully explored it all. Cut from lifeless rocks adrift in deep space to planets teeming with the fruits of galactic evolution, each stone was a testament to the glory of the Empire and the power of the Empress. Rutted sandstone to crystalline matrix, each told part of the Empire’s long and glorious history. 

In Tesh-Dar’s mind, each step also brought her people closer to their End of Days.

Like the stones, the flora of the Garden was made up of every species of plant that flowered from across the Empire. From gigantic trees that reached up to the top of the great dome to tiny algae, all were preserved for the pleasure and the glory of the Empress. Even species that were incompatible with the atmosphere natural to Her Children were here, protected by special energy bubbles that preserved them in their native atmosphere and soil, carefully tended by the army of clawless ones whose lives were devoted to this task. 

Many of the stones she trod upon were from worlds that had been one-time enemies of the Empire, including the dozen or so species Her Children had fought in past ages since the
Kreela
had attained the stars. Now the stones and flora the gardeners tended here were all that was left of them. Some of those ancient civilizations had fought to the last against the swords of Her Children, and were now remembered with honored reverence. Others, broken and beaten, consigning themselves to defeat, had been obliterated by the will of the Empress, their worlds left as nothing more than molten slag, barren of all life. The last such war had ended thousands of generations before Tesh-Dar was born, and some living now thought the records of them in the Books of Time were only legend. Tesh-Dar, greatest of the living warrior priestesses and elder blood sister to She Who Reigns, knew better. There was much in the Books of Time that she fervently wished was nothing more than legend, but wishing did not make it so.

She strolled to a part of the path that was newly added, made up of stones from the planet the humans had called Keran. The rocks and the flora from that world were no more or less remarkable than the other specimens in the Garden, save that they had been taken in a war whose birth she had witnessed, a war in which she would likely die. Now Keran, too, was part of the Empire. The many humans who had lived there, and many who had come from other worlds to aid them, had died at the hands of Tesh-Dar’s warriors, and the builder caste had since reshaped the planet in a way more pleasing to Her Children. The reshaping had been done more out of habit than out of need: the Empire had enough worlds on which to live, for as long as her race had left.

Tesh-Dar paused as she stood upon these tokens of Keran in her sandaled feet. The humans had impressed the great priestess: even at the last — exhausted, desperate, and afraid — they had resisted. And those who had come from across the stars to help them, sailing in primitive vessels and fighting with weapons the Empire had retired tens of thousands of cycles before, had fought tenaciously for a world that was not their own. The Empress, too, had been greatly pleased. Yet it did nothing to ease the worry in Tesh-Dar’s heart. As the highest-ranking warrior of her entire race, standing only two steps from the throne, Tesh-Dar bore the greatest responsibility for helping to preserve her people and carry out the will of the Empress. But their greatest enemy was not the humans. It was time.

“Why is your heart troubled so, priestess of the Desh-Ka?” the Empress said quietly from behind her.

Tesh-Dar turned and knelt before her sovereign. She had sensed the Empress approaching, of course. While they were sisters born of the same womb, although many cycles apart, She Who Reigned was Mother to them all. United by the ethereal force that was the Bloodsong, the members of their species were both individuals and part of a greater spiritual whole, of which She was the heart. Their purpose for existence was driven by the will of the living Empress, who contained the souls of every Empress who had lived since the founding of the Empire a hundred thousand cycles before. Her body held all of their souls, save one: the First Empress, the most powerful of all, and the one they sought for their very salvation.

“My Empress,” Tesh-Dar said reverently as she saluted, bringing her left fist in its armored gauntlet against her right breast, the smooth black metal of her armor ringing in the quiet of the Garden. She had been in the presence of the Empress many times over her long life, but each time was as the very first. She felt a surge of primal power, as if she were standing close to a spiritual flame, which, in a sense, she was. “The humans have given us hope,” she said, “yet I fear that we will not find what we must in the time we have left.”

“Walk with me, daughter,” said the Empress, holding out her arm. Tesh-Dar gently took it, careful not to mar her sovereign’s flawless blue skin with her long black talons, and they walked slowly together along this section of the path that was now a remembrance of their first conquest among the humans.

The two were a study in contrasts. While Tesh-Dar had the smooth cobalt blue skin and felinoid eyes shared by all of her race, she stood more than a head taller than most warriors and was wrapped in powerful muscle that made her the most powerful of her species, equal in raw strength to half a dozen warriors. She was clad in traditional ceremonial armor that was as black as night and yet shone like a mirror, with the rune of her order, the Desh-Ka, emblazoned in cyan on the breastplate. Her hair, black as was the norm for her people, hung in elegant braids, so long now that they were carefully looped around her upper arms. That was the only way any of Her Children wore their hair, for it was more than simply a legacy from some long-forgotten biological ancestor who needed it for warmth and to protect the skin: their hair was the physical manifestation of a complex spiritual bond with the Empress. At her neck she wore the ebony Collar of Honor, a band of living metal that all of Her Children came to wear in their youth, when they were ready to accept the Way. Every child wore at least five pendants of precious metal or gemstones that proclaimed their given name. As the child matured, more pendants were added to display her deeds and accomplishments in glorifying the Empress. Tesh-Dar wore more than any other of her kind save one, with rows of pendants flowing across the upper half of her chest. As with all the high priestesses of the warrior orders that served the Empress, she also wore a special symbol at the front of her collar: an oval of glittering metal in which had been carved the rune of the Desh-Ka, echoing the larger image that blazed from her breastplate.

By comparison, the Empress was was typical in size for a Kreelan female. Her dress was as simple as Her spirit was complex: much like the healer caste, all She wore was a simple white robe with no adornments. Around Her neck, unlike the black collar worn by the others of Her race, was a simple gold colored band. It, too, was living metal, far more resilient than gold, and was the only surviving relic of the First Empress, their only physical link to Her. Passed from Empress to Empress upon each new Ascension, if there was anything that embodied the spirit of the Empire, it would be this simple object.

The most striking feature of the Empress was that her hair, braided but not as long as Tesh-Dar’s, was pure white. It was not a random anomaly or an indicator of age: every Empress since the First Empress, Keel-Tath, had been born with white hair. It was part of their ancestral bloodline from those days of legend. Once every great cycle, roughly seven human years, a female warrior child was born with white hair and ebony talons. Not all would ascend to the throne, but the collar of the Empress could only be worn by a warrior who had those two traits. For the white hair proclaimed them as direct descendants of Keel-Tath, and the ebony talons signified that they were fertile.

“I share your fears,” the Empress said simply, as they continued walking along the path. There were no lies told in the Empire, no exaggerations or deceit to misdirect or conceal, no factions battling for control. These things had been left behind long, long ago, cut away from their civilization by the wisdom and sword of the First Empress. “Long have we searched for the One who shall fulfill the ancient prophesies, just as we have searched for the tomb of the First Empress among thousands of stars in the galaxy. Much of interest have we found, but not that which we so desperately need.”

The Empress’s words chilled Tesh-Dar. She did not need to hear them to know they were true, but it was one thing to believe such a thing on one’s own, and quite another to hear them from Her lips so plainly spoken. 

“There is no hope, then?” Tesh-Dar asked quietly, the hand not holding the arm of the Empress clenching so hard that her talons pierced the armored gauntlet she wore, and the skin beneath. She did not notice any pain.

Stopping in the middle of the path, the Empress turned to her, lifting up Her hand to caress Tesh-Dar’s face. “Do not despair so, Legend of the Sword,” She said, using the nickname She had given Tesh-Dar long ago, when she had been a child and under Tesh-Dar’s tutelage at the priestess’s
kazha
, or school of the Way. It was not merely a token of affection, for Tesh-Dar was the greatest swordmistress the Empire had ever known in all its history. Even before she became the last high priestess of the Desh-Ka and inherited her current physical form and the powers that were the legacy of that ancient sect, she had had no rival in the arena. Among Her Children, Tesh-Dar was indeed a living legend.