In Her Name: The Last War (71 page)

Mu’ira-Chular nodded, as it was the will of the Empress to follow this course, but her face betrayed her concerns, not least of which was how close was the Empire’s end of days. That their race was dying was not a secret, but few beyond the priestesses who had direct contact with the Empress truly understood how closely extinction loomed.

“My sisters,” Tesh-Dar told them, “there is no certainty in what we do. There is only certainty in our fate should we fail to find him. And if we find the One, the Empress believes we are also fated to discover the tomb of the First Empress, Keel-Tath. Then...then may the Curse be lifted and our race redeemed in Her glory.”

In chorus, the other priestesses murmured, “In Her name, let it be so.”

“What are your commands, my priestess?” One of them asked.

“We shall begin by attacking their ships,” Tesh-Dar said as bright cyan lines joined the images of the human worlds. “We do not want to sever their lifeblood, merely bleed them and bring them to battle. I leave detailed planning for this to the Ima’il-Kush,” she nodded to one of the priestesses, whose domain was the Imperial Fleet. “Then we will attack these worlds,” seven planets were highlighted with cyan halos, “using those warriors of our orders who have earned the privilege by right of Challenge. Unlike Keran, these will be extended campaigns that will take many cycles, giving our warriors many opportunities for combat, and hopefully making the humans even more challenging adversaries. At a time of our choosing, we will expand our attacks against additional human worlds. For now, we will wait and see what comes to pass.”

The other priestesses spoke amongst themselves for a time, dividing the human worlds among them in such a way that there would be glory enough for all. Their only disappointment was that so many warriors in the Empire would never get the chance to be properly blooded in battle before the humans were exterminated from the galaxy. 

As they discussed their strategies, Tesh-Dar looked at the target worlds. Of the seven, none had any particular features that appealed to her more than any other, so she simply picked one at random that would receive her personal attention. 

That one
, she thought to herself, looking at a heavily forested world with expansive oceans. It had a sizable human population, far larger than Keran, and a great deal of industry, according to the files extracted from the human computers. Had she cared to ask one of the keepers of the Books of Time who were now the holders of knowledge about things human, she could have learned the planet’s human name. 

Saint Petersburg.

* * *

In the armory of Tesh-Dar’s
kazha
, Pan’ne-Sharakh sat at a low table, her attention focused on an ornate sword. The blade was so long that the tip would touch the ground if she held the handle at chin height. Gracefully curved so that it could be drawn in an instant from its scabbard, the blade shimmered in the light of the torches that illuminated her work. The crystal handle with inlaid gemstones was large enough for the massive hands that wielded the weapon. It belonged to Tesh-Dar, and was one of the many weapons Pan’ne-Sharakh had fashioned for her in their long acquaintance.

The weapon rested in a carefully padded cradle, the edge facing up toward her. With reverent hands she stroked the gleaming silver metal, fashioning its form as an act of will. Much like the builder caste and the matrix material from which they created anything that was necessary to suit the will of the Empress, the armorers had the gift of working the living metal that made up their edged weapons and the collars that all who walked the Way wore around their necks. It was the hardest, most durable substance in the galaxy, yet was malleable as clay to the gentle touch of a skilled armorer. Kreelan blades were not made with the fires of a forge and the hammer upon the anvil, although their body armor was still made in such a fashion. Pan’ne-Sharakh smiled inwardly at the strength she still possessed, even at her advanced age, to wield a hammer to bend such metal as she would.

They were created from ingots of metal, carefully grown over the span of many years. The ingots were smoothed and shaped by the armorer’s vision and touch, their spirits in communion with the metal as they stroked the blade into existence. The handles and the hand guards were generally created by more mundane means, although armorers of Pan’ne-Sharakh’s skill — of which there had been few over the ages — could form them as an act of will from virtually any material. The form was always functional first, yet every weapon was also a work of art. The warriors brought glory to the Empress in battle, but Pan’ne-Sharakh and her sisters glorified the Empress through the perfection and beauty of their craft.

She lovingly stroked the sides of the blade with her hands, barely brushing it with her fingertips, as her mind focused on its essence. The metal reacted instantly, the molecular structure realigning as she willed. This was an old weapon, one she had fashioned for the priestess after the Change, after Tesh-Dar had become the last of the high priestesses of the Desh-Ka order. In Tesh-Dar’s hands, the weapon could slice through a brace of enemy warriors. Even if the blade was nicked, it would reform on its own back to a killing edge. In Pan’ne-Sharakh’s mind, her fingers not only formed and sharpened the blade, but infused it with her love. While she did not lavish this much attention on every weapon, there were a select few such as this one that always received her gentle touch before and after a challenge. Or a battle.

She absently hummed an ancient hymn to the Empress, a harmony to the Bloodsong that was a soothing warmth in her ancient veins. The clawless ones did not feel the same fire as the warriors, yet in some ways they could read the eddies and currents of their race’s spiritual river far better than their taloned sisters.

For Pan’ne-Sharakh, applying her craft always allowed her to see more clearly the things in her mind. She knew that something deeply troubled Li’ara-Zhurah, who had begged to return from the nursery world. It was something more troubling than even the priestess believed, but exactly what was beyond Pan’ne-Sharakh’s understanding, and perhaps even that of the Empress. She feared that Li’ara-Zhurah might be one among their race, exceedingly rare, who might choose to depart the Way, to fall from Her grace. It would break the heart of Tesh-Dar, who had pinned such high hopes upon the young warrior. Pan’ne-Sharakh had spoken to Tesh-Dar about her concerns, and while the great priestess listened carefully as she always did, she saw no reason to change what was. If anything, it had made her more insistent that Li’ara-Zhurah accompany her on the new campaign against the humans, in hopes that Tesh-Dar could assist the young warrior through the pain that yet wracked her soul.

Switching to a hymn that was an ancient plea for intercession from the Empress, Pan’ne-Sharakh poured her soul into the metal of Tesh-Dar’s sword. It was all she could do to help shield the heart of one she so loved.

* * *

Li’ara-Zhurah stood by Tesh-Dar’s side as her new First, watching hundreds of proud warriors filing past, each one rendering a salute to Tesh-Dar. They moved quickly up the massive ramp of the heavy cruiser that would serve as Tesh-Dar’s flagship for this new campaign. They did not march in step, nor was there music or speeches to celebrate the mission of carnage on which they embarked. They needed none of these things, for the Bloodsong echoed in their hearts, and it carried them joyfully to war.

The emotional river of fierce anticipation that flowed through Li’ara-Zhurah’s own veins left her strangely unmoved. She yearned for battle, yes, but as a form of release for her soul, and not simply to honor the Empress by slaying Her enemies. Li’ara-Zhurah’s spirit had been torn during the first battle with the humans on Keran, and just as it had begun to heal, it again had been torn by her first mating. 

She shivered as she brutally shoved the memory aside, not noticing how Tesh-Dar suddenly glanced at her, the great priestess’s eyes narrowed with concern. Li’ara-Zhurah had been desperate to leave the nursery world: the thought of having to remain there through the entire half-cycle of a child’s gestation had been agonizing. It was not that the nurseries were unpleasant, other than the mating experience itself: indeed, in a race that created beauty in all things with the same passion they applied to personal combat, the nurseries were among the most beautiful worlds of the Empire. The warriors and clawless ones awaiting the birth of their children had no duties, no obligations save the normal daily rituals of dressing, meditating, and preparing for sleep. It was a time of unaccustomed luxury and contemplation, with many of the expectant mothers studying passages from the Books of Time or, particularly popular among the clawless ones, practicing one of the many forms of art known to their civilization.

None of this held any appeal for Li’ara-Zhurah. She was not interested in the Books of Time, and cared not for the arts. Her only desire was to grapple with the humans again, to finally gain the spiritual release that had been denied her on Keran. She had sent an urgent message to Tesh-Dar, praying fervently to the Empress that the priestess would not abandon her to the comfortable prison of the nursery. 

Li’ara-Zhurah had been shocked when the priestess summoned her to act as her First. While it was an incredible honor, Li’ara-Zhurah’s deepest reaction was relief, not gratitude. She boarded a ship for the Homeworld the same day that Tesh-Dar’s response arrived, eager to leave the nightmare of the mating ritual behind her. 

Now, waiting to board another ship that would again take her to make war on the humans, her hand, as if by its own accord, strayed to her belly. She thought of the life growing within her, and fervently prayed that it would be a female. A sterile female. The thought of bringing forth one of the misshapen males was unutterably vile, and she would not willingly see the torture of mating inflicted upon any fertile offspring. The child was now nothing more than a small but rapidly growing collection of cells, a tiny nub of tissue inside her womb. There would come a time, soon, when its spirit would awaken. It was then, long before even the healers could determine what the child’s gender was to be, that she would know if it was to be male or female. She knew the souls of the males formed part of the Bloodsong; but if the songs of the females formed an ever-churning river of emotion, the songs of the males were little more than tiny pebbles at the bottom of the river over which the water flowed. She would know the birth of a female’s spirit from its strength and clarity; from a male, she would sense little but its existence. Yet her apprehension about the nature of her child remained. In her darkest dreams she plunged a dagger into her belly, but to do so would have cast her from the grace and love of the Empress to spend eternity in the infinite Darkness.

She knew such thoughts were tantamount to heresy; thus they remained unspoken, especially to Tesh-Dar. She trusted the great priestess with far more than her life: Tesh-Dar had touched Li’ara-Zhurah’s spirit in a way that was rare among her people, a gift possessed by only a few of the great warrior priestesses. That was before Li’ara-Zhurah’s mating, during the battle for Keran. She would never willingly allow Tesh-Dar to so openly probe her spirit now. Tesh-Dar had the authority and the power to do so if she wished, but Li’ara-Zhurah hoped that the priestess’s respect for her would hold her curiosity at bay should she sense anything amiss.

Li’ara-Zhurah knew that her emotions were transparent to the peers, and particularly to Tesh-Dar, but none of her sisters could fully glean the focus of her fears. They believed her soul to still be grief-stricken over what had happened to her at Keran, and she was content to allow their misperceptions to continue. For herself, deep in her heart, she wished for death before the turn of the next great cycle when she would again have to mate. The war with the humans offered her a convenient solution: there would be many opportunities to die with honor for the glory of the Empress.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Dmitri Andreevich Sikorsky sat in a small booth in one of the many nondescript cafés that were scattered about the city of Saint Petersburg, the capital of the planet that bore the same name. The founders had tried to recreate some of the ornate majesty of the original city in Russia on Earth, but had only succeeded in producing a tawdry imitation of Peter the Great’s vision. The only thing they had duplicated with uncompromising success was the tyranny and despotism that had characterized so much of the history of their ancestors’ motherland. 

In times long past, in a nation on Earth that had once been known as the Soviet Union, Sikorsky would have been known as a dissident. He was a member of a quiet underground movement yearning for political change, but unable to openly express it without suffering severe reprisals. More active demonstrations of political discontent, such as armed rebellion, were simply impossible, as the government controlled all the weapons. Even street rallies were tantamount to suicide. The secret police rarely kicked down doors in the middle of the night anymore because they did not have to: most of the real “threats to the state” had long since been imprisoned, exiled to Riga, or executed. That did not keep them from periodically terrorizing the populace to remind them of the true power of the state, but Sikorsky and his underground companions were thankful for what few blessings came their way.

Unable to confront the power of the state in any other fashion, Sikorsky had done the only thing he could to fight back: he had become an agent for the
Alliance Française
. Sikorsky considered himself a patriot, but after he had experienced first hand the excesses of the government and the Party that controlled it, he had to do something, no matter the risk.

After the armistice ended the war and he was released from military service, he managed to get a job as a foreman of a construction firm (which, like all commercial ventures, was owned by the state). He was involved in the reconstruction of the Alliance Embassy, which had been burned to the ground when the war started, and had made a number of friends on the embassy staff. Over the years, he had been required to maintain and repair a number of the buildings on the compound, which gave him continued opportunities to maintain contact with them.