As Shera-Khan leaned down to do as he had been told, a hollow thump, followed by the airlock coaming flashing green, announced the arrival of the Golden Pearl.
“I’m going to see your planet burn, Reza,” Borge shouted into the smoke, although his eyes were still riveted to the inboard airlock hatch and the telltales on the control panel. The outer lock was cycling open. Only a minute left before he was free from this floating coffin. “If you manage to make it to a lifeboat, you might have a chance to see it for your–”
Shera-Khan bolted from his grasp, slashing at his arms with his claws as he leaped into the smoke-shrouded darkness.
“Little bastard!” Borge cursed, raising his weapon to shoot the boy in the back.
As his finger convulsed on the trigger, a huge shadow suddenly materialized from the mist between the gun and the retreating boy. The blaster’s energy bolt caught Tesh-Dar squarely in the middle of the chest, flaring her armor white with heat as it penetrated to the aged and dying flesh beneath.
But Borge was not to receive a second chance. One shot was all he would get. As if taking candy from a comatose child, Tesh-Dar slashed out with one hand, her claws severing Borge’s arm at the wrist.
Borge opened his mouth to scream, not in pain, for he felt none yet, but in fear. He saw Tesh-Dar as the incarnate devil of his nightmares, the bogeyman come to horrid life. Her mouth opened to reveal fangs that could rip his throat open, but that was not Tesh-Dar’s way. She did not care for the foul taste of human blood. Instead, she plunged the talons of her other hand into his ribcage. As she lifted him from the floor, his jaw hanging open in a scream of terrified agony, she let out her own roar of anguish and pain, and righteous vengeance upon an evil that fed upon its own kind. Slowly did her fingers close, drawing her talons together around his furiously pumping heart. He clawed at her hand, his throat now making hollow gagging sounds as his lungs filled with blood and collapsed. With one final, titanic heave, Tesh-Dar tore his heart, still beating, from his chest. She threw her head back and roared in triumph, crushing the disembodied organ in her Herculean grip.
And then, like a great stone pillar with a tiny but mortal flaw, she collapsed to the floor, her bloodied hands covering the still-smoking hole in her own chest.
Reza was there to catch her, and he gently, lovingly, lay her down to rest. “My priestess,” he said softly. “My mother–”
She signed him to silence before putting a hand against his face. He held it in one of his own to ease the trembling he felt in hers. “My son,” she said softly, “the Race is in your hands, now; our salvation is in your love for Her. Go to Her now… quickly. You must save Her… or we all shall face eternity… in darkness.” A tiny tremor ran through her, and her hand clamped painfully around his. “May thy Way be long and glorious… my beloved son.”
The strength passed from her hand as her eyes closed, her spirit fleeing her body for what should have been paradise, but without the Empress’s light could only be a cold and terrifyingly lonely Hell. A Hell he had seen for himself.
“Reza,” Enya whispered behind him, “why… why did she do this? Why didn’t you stop her? You could have killed Borge without… without this.”
Reza gently unclasped the band and its honors from around Tesh-Dar’s neck. Now that her life had passed from her body, the ancient living metal clasp surrendered to his trembling fingers. “She did it because it was her Way,” he told her softly.
“I do not mean to intrude on emotional discussion,” Zhukovski interjected, “but time becomes short. Security will be here any mom–”
The airlock at the end of the gangway suddenly cycled open to reveal four ISS guards in battle dress.
“Where’s the pres–” one of them began before seeing Borge’s mangled body and the three humanoids in Kreelan armor.
The ISS sergeant’s observation of the gory scene was cut short long before he or his men could raise their weapons. His eyes had just shifted from Borge’s body to Reza when Shera-Khan’s shrekka sheared his head cleanly from his torso. The head toppled to the deck like a bowling ball, the armored helmet clattering to a stop near one of the other guards’ feet. The now headless torso spasmed as if in surprise, and a fountain of blood from the severed carotid artery sprayed the lock’s ceiling before the corpse toppled backward into the airlock.
Nicole shot two of the others, while Braddock finished off the last.
“Let’s go,” Braddock said tightly, gesturing toward the waiting gangway into the smaller ship as he watched the blast doors down one of the other corridors start to cycle open. “More bad guys are on the way.”
His last sentence was punctuated by a sudden burst of rifle fire that filled the corridor with crimson and emerald beams of lethal energy as a score of ISS guards rushed through the doors.
“I will cover you!” Zhukovski shouted into Reza’s ear, and with his good hand he snatched up a pulse rifle from one of the fallen guards, training it with evident skill on the men advancing upon them. Zhukovski shot one, then another before he was forced back against the wall under a hail of return fire.
“Admiral, we can’t leave you!” Nicole shouted above the riot of gunfire that was becoming uncomfortably accurate, as she loosed her own barrage on their attackers.
“Get on that ship, Carré!” Zhukovski shouted furiously. “That is direct order!”
After a moment’s hesitation, everyone started toward the airlock, stumbling backward through the smoke and stench of ozone and scorched flesh as they sought the safety of the Pearl’s main airlock, all the while firing back at the approaching guards.
“You, too, Reza,” the old admiral said. “My work is done in this life. You have much yet to do. Good luck, my friend.” With a devilish grin, without fear or remorse, he turned his attention back to his chosen enemy.
Reza wanted to thank him in some way, but there were no words. He said a silent prayer to the Empress for this man whose courage would have been the envy of the peers, then turned to make his way to the Pearl.
As he passed Borge’s body, he noticed the black case that had been the focus of the dead usurper’s final moments. Wondering what the man could have considered so important, he picked it up by the bloodied handle before dashing up the textured metal ramp and into the airlock.
The armored door slid closed behind him as Zhukovski’s final battle raged toward its inevitable conclusion.
Fifty-Four
Reza immediately sensed that something was wrong; the aura of his surroundings had changed, darkened, as soon as he set foot inside the Golden Pearl and the airlock had cycled closed behind him.
Nicole, Tony, and Enya had already dashed for the cockpit, a muffled scuffle announcing that the Golden Pearl had just had a change in flight crew. Reza felt the Pearl lurch as she separated from the dying Warspite. In seconds, the sleek ship was accelerating toward the Empress moon as Reza had instructed, dodging through the web of energy fire and torpedoes from the massive battle raging around them.
“What is it, Father?” Shera-Khan asked in a whisper as Reza drew his sword. His own hand reached instinctively for one of the remaining shrekkas. He did not have his father’s special senses, but he could sense the change in him, even without hearing his Bloodsong, as he could sense that hot had turned to cold.
“I know not, my son,” he replied quietly as he set down the black case on a nearby table to leave his hands free for fighting. “Something is amiss; beware.”