Riinistarka was young. His father might have said, “young and foolish.” However that might have been, he was young enough to feel the joy and exhilaration of closing on a worthy foe in company with his brothers. If this was foolishness, so be it. Besides, if he were truly foolish he would not have felt the fear that gnawed at his insides, threatening to break through the joy and exhilaration. He had not known true fear since his dangerous time in the pens as a helpless, cannibalistic nestling. The memory of that made him shudder as present fear could not.
And how can it be foolish, anyway, to fight for my clan to regain its position, he thought, to fight for my clan to survive?
Ahead of Riinistarka the threshkreen warship seemed broken and helpless with jagged-edged metal showing where the smoke and flames did not cover. The covering giant demon that the God King had seen from a distance was gone now. He knew, intellectually, that it was not a real demon, of course. Though the practical difference between a real demon and that ship seemed minimal, at best. He was sure, in his innermost being, that the representation had come from whatever intelligence quickened the ship.
Perhaps a lucky hit had destroyed whatever intellect that was, for suddenly, the false cover had fallen away, leaving only the image of a wreck such as the people only saw as the residue of battles in space. That the enemy guns had fallen silent at exactly the same time as the holographic cover had disappeared seemed to confirm this.
Despite the obvious ruination visited upon the threshkreen ship, however, it was still steaming away rapidly through the hole it had previously blasted in the People’s enveloping net. Riinistarka strongly suspected that unless it were utterly destroyed it would be back. The People, themselves, were quite capable of restoring a wrecked space ship. He had seen nothing to date to suggest that these human vermin were any less clever.
Indeed, Riinistarka had already lost enough dear brothers to make him suspect that these threshkreen were quite possibly more clever. All the more reason they must be destroyed then, while they were still weak and relatively backward, lest the people later perish before a more dangerous enemy.
Dangerous? Riinistarka felt a sudden twinge of fear rise to the surface despite his best efforts to suppress it. There is the tale my father told, of Stinghal the Knower, and the siege of Joolon; how he breached his own walls and set fire to his citadel…
Suddenly, three quarters of the smoke and flame surrounding the threshkreen ship disappeared and Riinistarka found himself staring into the muzzles of eleven eight-inch guns.
More flame bloomed, eleven fiery blossoms of an altogether different character from that which had seemed to cover the ship. This was followed a split second later by the appearance of eleven smaller blooms. And then came agony.
The first of the humans’ heavy iron balls struck the control panel of the tenar of Riinistarka. The panel stopped the ball, yet splinters torn from it pierced the young God King’s body and shredded one eye. The next, so soon after the first that the Posleen could not sense the time differential, tore off one shoulder, lifting the alien onto his rear legs. The third, following the second at the tiniest interval, entered his uplifted belly, tearing apart his internal organs and crushing his spine half a meter forward of his rear legs.
None were merciful enough to kill outright.
Riinistarka barely managed to hold onto his tenar. With his controls destroyed and his spine crushed, he could not hope to do more than stay aboard as the tenar spun slowly in place a few meters above the sea.
With difficulty, the God King turned his remaining good eye onto his ruined shoulder. Splintered bone protruded between shreds of flesh. Yellow blood seeped out. Feeling sick, the young alien looked away.
In looking away from his shoulder Riinistarka’s eye fell on his belly. The threshkreen projectile had caused the skin of that to split, spilling organs out. He did not want to imagine what it had done to his insides. He forced himself not to think about what it had done to his insides.
At first, the wounds had not hurt, exactly. But after a few minutes, as the initial shock of being hit wore off, the pain grew. The God King whimpered at first. Then, slowly, the pain transformed into agony, the whimpers turned to screams.
“Faaatherrr!”
“We’re through, Captain,” Daisy’s avatar announced with what seemed like weariness. “Some of the enemy are pursuing, but the rear turret, and the three of the remaining four secondaries that I can bring to bear should be enough to keep them at bay.”
McNair, who didn’t just seem weary, nodded weakly.
“Casualties? Damage?” he asked.
“Incomplete reports, Captain. Bad, in any case. I am cut off from some areas.”
“You going to be okay, Babes?”
Daisy’s avatar nodded through her pain. “I’ll be fine, Captain.”
The pain had reached its peak and then begun to ebb even as Riinistarka’s life ebbed out with the flow of his yellow blood. He had only the one dull yellow eye left to contemplate the departure of the enemy, his final enemy, he knew.
So far gone was he that he did not even notice as his father’s tenar pulled up next to his. The airborne sled shuddered as Binastarion crossed deftly from his own tenar to his son’s. A great cry of woe and pain came from the father as he saw his son’s wounds. The father folded his legs to kneel beside the dying son. He reached out one hand to scratch the youngster behind his crest.
“Father?” Riinistarka asked weakly at the familiar touch.
“Yes, Son, it’s me.”
“I’m sorry, Father. We failed… I failed.”
Binastarion shook his head. “Nonsense, boy. You did all you could. No one could ask for more. I’m proud of you.”
The father followed his son’s gaze to where the hated threshkreen ship was escaping from his clutches. At least we hurt it badly. Though I am sure it will be back.
“You and your brothers damaged the thresh, and badly. It might well sink,” he lied. “Certainly it is at least half destroyed. In any case, it won’t be back to hurt us any time soon.”
Interlude
“And the other half, Zira?”
“The other half is that the usual procedure would be to turn over the precise normal that offended,” the Kenstain answered. “But in this case, the normal was a special pet. The philosopher would not give it up. The offended Kessentai was adamant. Fighting broke out. It spread like a wildfire among the septs of the clan. The reason it spread, of course, is that we had managed to create our own conditions for a miniature orna’adar, right there on our island. And we had not had time to prepare our escape.”
“Oh, demons,” said Guanamarioch.
“Right,” agreed Ziramoth. “The clan quickly broke into competing factions, all based on that one little spark. Instead of waiting for another clan to nuke our cities we saved them the bother and did it ourselves. Of course, as soon as the conflagration started those normals whose gift it is to build the starships began work instinctively, but it was all they could do to keep, barely, ahead of the destruction. And they never got very far ahead. Of all of our clan who had settled that island, fewer than one in twenty managed to escape. And the scars of the fissuring, brother slaying brother, were too deep to heal. The refugees stayed in the small groups into which they had split. Some were absorbed into other clans, but most went their own way, leaping into the void between the stars even without reconnaissance.”