Empire Read online

  He glanced back toward the building occupied by the other platoon just as a massive barrage of Kreelan weapons fire erupted on the far side. He watched in horror as the structure began to crumble under the onslaught. The human defenders, sensing the futility of holding on, came boiling out into the street, heading for Solon’s position, only to be cut down in a brutal crossfire from further down the lane.

  The firing tapered off, and Solon saw shadows rapidly flowing toward the other platoon’s survivors: Kreelan warriors silently advancing, swords drawn. They killed with energy weapons when they had to, but preferred more personal means of combat.

  “Oh my God,” Solon whispered, knowing that his own final stand would soon be upon him: they were surrounded now, cut off. His throat constricted and his stomach threatened to heave up the handful of tasteless ration cake he had eaten earlier in the day. He flipped up the visor for a moment to look at the scene with his own eyes, then flipped it back down to penetrate the smoky darkness.

  Suddenly, a lone figure darted across the street, plunging suicidally into the raging battle. Under the figure’s arm swung what could have been an oversized doll, but Solon knew that it was not. The little arms clung to the neck of the madly running soldier and the rag doll’s little legs kicked at empty air. With a sinking sensation, Solon realized who it was.

  “Reza!” he shouted, his heart hammering with fear and joy, wondering how in the Lord’s name the boy had gotten here.

  With a crack of thunder, the soldier’s luck ran out as a crimson lance struck him, spinning him around like a top. He collapsed into the rubble, shielding the boy’s body with his own.

  Solon roared in the protective fury only a parent can know, his voice thundering above the clamoring of the guns. Camilla turned just in time to see him leap through the blasted wall into the carnage raging beyond.

  “Solon!” she screamed, struggling up from her position next to the hammering pulse gun.

  “No!” Enrique yelled at her, grabbing for her arm. He was too late to stop her as she bolted from the pit. “Dammit!” he hissed, struggling to change the empty and useless magazine himself. He pried the heavy canister off the gun’s breech section with blind, groping hands while his bloodshot eyes tracked the rapidly approaching shadows of the enemy.

  Solon suddenly staggered back over the shattered wall. His breath came in long heaves as if he had just finished running a marathon, and his armor was pitted and smoking from half a dozen glancing hits. In his arms was a small bundle of rags. Camilla nearly fainted at the sight of Reza’s face, his skin black with soot and streaked with tears of fright.

  “Mama,” the boy cried, reaching for her.

  “Oh, baby,” she said softly, taking him in her arms and rocking him. “What are you doing here?” Camilla asked.

  Solon collapsed next to her, wrapping his arms around his wife and child.

  “What happened to the bunker?” Snowden shouted in between bursts from her rifle as she tried to kill the Kreelans who escaped Enrique’s non-stop firing.

  “The same thing that’s going to happen to us if you guys don’t start shooting!” Enrique screamed hoarsely, finally slamming a new – and the last – magazine into his pulse gun. “The Blues are all over the place out here!”

  Reluctantly letting go of his wife and son, Solon grabbed up his rifle and thrust its muzzle through a hole in the wall. Gritting his teeth in rage and a newfound determination to survive, to protect his wife and son, he opened fire on the wraiths that moved through the darkness.

  Camilla, after a last hug, set Reza down next to Snowden. “Take care of him,” she begged before taking up her station next to Enrique.

  Snowden nodded and held Reza tightly as the thunder of gunfire surrounded them.

  * * *

  The sky was black as pitch, black as death, as the priestess walked alone over the arena this world had become. Her sandaled feet touched the ground but left no sound, no footprint. She looked up toward where the stars should be, yearning for the great moon that shone over the Homeworld. But the only sight to be had was the glowing red smears of the fires that were reflected by the wafting smoke and dust.

  As she made her way across the field of carnage, she touched the bodies of the fallen children to honor them as they had honored their Empress. They had sacrificed their lives to show their love for Her. She grieved for them all, that they had died this day, never again to feel the flame that drove them to battle, the thrill of sword and claw, never again to serve the Empress through their flesh. Now they basked in the quiet sunset of the Afterlife, someday perhaps to join the ranks of the Ancient Ones, the warriors of the spirit.

  She moved on toward her destination. It had once been a human dwelling, but now was a mound of ashen rubble. It squatted impetuously in the wasteland created by weapons the Kreela disdained to use. The humans had never realized that the destruction of their worlds was caused by their own predilection for such weaponry, to which the Kreela sometimes had to respond in kind. The warriors of the Empress sought battles of the mind, body, and spirit, of sword and claw, and not of brute destruction.

  Watching the battles rage here for several cycles of the sun across the sky, she had become increasingly curious about these particular humans who fought so well, and at last had decided that perhaps they were worthy of her personal attention. She bade the young warriors to rest, to wait for her return, before setting out on her own journey of discovery.

  She paused when she reached the back of the crumbled structure that hid the humans she sought. She listened for their heartbeats, smelled their pungent body odor, and felt for their strange alien spirit with her mind. After a moment she had an image of them, of where they sat and stood within.

  Silent as the dead around her, she moved to a chosen point along the wall. Her breathing and heart stilled, she concealed everything about herself that made her presence real. Unless one of the humans looked directly at her, she would be utterly invisible.

  Then she stepped through the wall, her flesh and armor melding with the essence of the barrier as she passed through without so much as a whisper.

  * * *

  “Is that all you remember, honey?” Camilla asked Reza softly, brushing his unruly hair back with her hand, which was temporarily freed from the armored skin she had been wearing for the past several days.

  “Yes, Mama,” he replied. The fear had mostly left him, now that he was with them again, and that they thought he had done the right thing. “All I remember was lots of smoke. Then someone started to scream. People ran, hurting each other, because they were afraid. Someone, Madame Barnault, I think, led me out, but I lost her after we got outside. I remembered where Papa said you would be, so I came here to find you. I almost made it, except the Kreelans were everywhere. That’s when Kerry–”

  “That’s enough, son,” Solon said gently, not wanting to force the boy to describe the death of the soldier, who had been another friend of their family. “It’s all right, now. You’re here and safe, and that’s all that counts.” He exchanged a quick glance with Camilla. Safe was hardly the word to use, he knew, even though the Kreelans had apparently given up for the day. Reza would now have to suffer whatever fate was in store for the rest of them. Solon could not justify risking someone else’s life for the boy’s benefit. One had already died for him.

  “Reza,” Camilla told him, “I want you to stay with Snowden and help her find more ammunition for us.” She leaned close to his ear and whispered, “And I want you to watch out for her and protect her. She’s hurt and needs a big boy like you to care for her.”

  Reza nodded vigorously, glancing in Snowden’s direction, the horrors of the past few hours fading. He had a mission now, some responsibility that helped to displace his fear. “I will, Mama,” he said quietly so that Snowden would not hear.

  Later, as his father and mother rested under Enrique’s watchful eyes, Snowden kept an eye on Reza as he busied himself with hunting for the things she had told hi
m to look for.

  Peering through the darkness, his father having told him that they could not use a light for fear of bringing the Kreelans, Reza spied what Snowden had told him would be a great prize in the game they were playing. A bright metal clip protruded from under a stairway crawlspace, its surface reflecting the occasional flash of artillery fire that showed through the mangled roof. He saw that it was attached to a big, gray cylinder: a pulse gun magazine. Grinning with excitement, he scampered forward to retrieve it. He had heard Enrique say that they didn’t have any more of the magazines, and the big gun wouldn’t work.

  He reached down to pick it up, but found that it was much heavier than he had imagined. He pulled and heaved, but the magazine would not move. He started sweeping the dirt away from around it, to try and dig it out. His hand brushed against something, something smooth and warm, totally different from the rubbery pocked coating of the magazine that was supposed to make it less slippery.

  Curious, he reached out to feel what it was. He did not need a light to tell him that he was touching someone’s leg, and they had their foot resting on the magazine. Looking up into the darkness above him, he could see only a shadow.

  “Who are you?” he asked quietly, curious as to how and why someone would have come into the house without letting his father know about it. “Are you one of Papa’s soldiers?”

  Silence.

  A flare burst far down the street, slowly settling toward the ground. In its flickering glow, Reza saw clearly the monstrous shape above him, saw the eyes that glared down from the dark-skinned face and the glistening ivory fangs that emerged from the mouth in a silent snarl.

  Reza stumbled back, screaming at the nightmarish shape, all thoughts of the precious magazine vanished from his mind. He scrambled backward on all fours like a terrified crab, screaming. “Mama! Papa!”

  “Reza, what is it?” Solon asked, picking the boy up from the debris-strewn floor as he burst from the hallway. “What’s wrong?”

  “One of them’s in here! By the stairs! There, Papa!” Reza pointed, but the monster had disappeared. “It was right there!” he cried, stabbing at the air with his trembling finger.

  Solon peered through the darkness, but could see nothing. “Reza, there’s no way anyone could be back there. That’s the one place where they can’t get in, because it’s a solid wall, no doors or windows, no holes.”

  “Papa, one of them’s in here!” Reza wailed, his terrified eyes still fixed on where he knew the monster had been.

  Solon hesitated. He knew how tired and confused Reza must be, how much they all were, and he knew he had to humor the boy.

  “I’ll take a look,” Snowden volunteered. In the time since the last wave of Kreelans had attacked, Camilla had finally had time to splint her leg properly and block the nerves. Walking on it would probably do permanent damage, but Snowden had figured that it was better to be alive and mostly functional than just plain dead. She snatched up her helmet and put it on. The shattered interior of the house, enhanced into precise detail by the visor, came into focus. “He’s probably just wired over what happened at the bunker,” she said. Camilla nodded, but Snowden could tell that she was nervous. “Don’t worry, Camilla,” Snowden reassured her, hefting her rifle. “I’ll take care of him.” Then, turning to the boy, she said, “Can you show me, Reza?”

  Reza did not want to go anywhere near the stairs or the back rooms again. But everyone was looking at him, and he would not act like a baby in front of them. After all, he was seven years old now. “All right,” he said, his voice shaking.

  Solon set him down, and then looked at Snowden. “Just be careful, okay?”

  “No problem, boss,” she replied easily. Her outward confidence wasn’t foolish arrogance: even as exhausted as she was, she was still the best sharpshooter in the entire company. “C’mon, Reza.” Taking the boy’s hand, her other arm cradling the rifle, she led him down the dark hallway toward the back of the house.

  Once into the hallway, she became increasingly edgy with every crunch of plaster under her boots, only one of which she could feel, the other having been deadened to stifle the pain. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing at stiff attention, but she could not figure out why. There’s nothing here, she told herself firmly.

  She finally decided that it must be because Reza’s grip had tightened with every step. It was a gauge of the little boy’s fear. But her own senses registered nothing at all.

  Reza moved forward, about half a step ahead of her, one hand clinging to hers, the other probing ahead of him through the murk. He knew he had seen the alien warrior. But as his fear grew, so did his self-doubt. Maybe I was wrong, he thought.

  Behind them came a scraping sound like a knife against a sharpening stone. Snowden whirled around, pushing Reza to the ground behind her with one hand while the other brought the rifle to bear.

  “Hell!” she hissed. A fiber optic connector that had been part of the house’s control system dangled from the ceiling, the cable scraping against the wall. She shook her head, blowing out her breath. Don’t be so tense, she told herself. Take it easy. “Reza,” she said, turning around, “I think we better head back to the others. There’s nothing–”

  She stopped in mid-sentence as she saw a clawed fist emerge from the wall in front of her, the alien flesh and sinew momentarily merging with stone and steel in a pulsating mass of swirling colors. The hand closed around Snowden’s neck with a chilling snick. The alien warrior’s hand was so large that her talons overlapped Snowden’s spine. Gasping in horror, Snowden was forced backward as the Kreelan made her way through the wall and into the dark hallway.

  Snowden’s mouth gaped open, but no words came. There was only a muted stuttering that was building toward an uncontrollable ululation of terror. She dropped her rifle, the tiny gap between her body and the alien making it as useless as a medieval pike in a dense thicket. Desperately, she groped for the pistol strapped to her lower thigh, her other hand vainly trying to break the Kreelan’s grip on her neck.

  His mind reeling from the horror in front of him, Reza backpedaled away, his mouth open in a scream for help that he would never remember making. He watched helplessly as the warrior’s sword, free from the wall’s impossible embrace, pierced Snowden’s breastplate. It burst from her back with a thin metallic screech and a jet of blood. Snowden’s body twitched like a grotesque marionette, her legs dancing in the confusion of signals coursing through her severed spine, her arms battering weakly at the enemy’s face. The pistol had fallen to the floor, its safety still on.

  Satisfied that the human was beaten, the Kreelan let go of Snowden’s neck. As the young woman’s body fell to the floor, the alien warrior pulled the sword free, the blade dragging at Snowden’s insides with its serrated upper edge. She was dead before her helmeted head hit the floor.

  Reza bolted for the main room, his scream of terror reverberating from the walls and battered ceiling.

  “Reza!” Solon cried as his son burst into the room to fall at his father’s feet. “Where’s Snowden?”

  “Solon,” Camilla whispered, slowly rising to her feet as she saw the dark shape silently move from the hallway. A burst from down the street lit the thing’s face with a hellish glow, leaving no doubt as to its origin.

  The Kreelan stopped just beyond the hallway. Watching. Waiting.

  Enrique reacted first. Instinctively he brought up his rifle, aiming it at the alien’s chest.

  “Bitch!” he cried, his finger convulsing on the trigger.

  Solon saw her arm move like a scythe in the eerie display of his helmet visor. The movement was accompanied by a strange whistling noise, like a storm wind howling against a windowpane.

  Enrique suddenly grunted. Solon saw the gunner’s eyes register disbelief, then nothing at all as they rolled up into his head. His body sagged backward and the gun discharged once into the ceiling before clattering to the floor at his side. Solon saw a huge wet horizontal gash in Enrique’s che
st armor that was wide enough to put both fists in, as if someone had split him open with an ax.

  Camilla reached for her rifle, propped against the wall behind her.

  “No,” Solon said softly. “Don’t move.”

  She stopped.

  Reza lay face down on the floor, his body pointing like an arrow toward where his father now stood frozen. He blinked away the tears in his eyes, his entire body trembling with fear. He felt something sharp under his right hand, and without thinking he closed his fingers around it: a knife. He clung to it desperately, for he had no weapon of his own. A brief glance told him that it was his father’s. He knew that his father always carried two, but must have somehow lost this one in the rubble during the fighting. Reza held it tightly to his chest.

  “Why doesn’t she attack?” Camilla whispered, terribly tempted to reach for her pistol or rifle. The sight of Enrique’s gutted body stayed her hand. And then there was Snowden. Undoubtedly, she lay dead somewhere deeper in the house.

  “I don’t know, but…” Solon hesitated. He suddenly had an idea. “I’m going to try something.”

  Before Camilla could say a word, he drew the long-bladed knife he carried in his web gear. It was an inferior weapon to the Kreelan’s sword, but it was all he had, and he didn’t know where his regular combat knife had disappeared to. Then he slowly moved his free hand to the clasps that held his web gear to his armor. With two quick yanks, the webbing that held his grenades, pistol and extra weapon power packs clattered to the floor.

  “So far, so good,” he muttered. Sweat poured from his brow down the inside of his helmet. “Now you do it,” he ordered his wife. “Draw your knife and drop the rest of your gear.”