“Well, my friend,” Thorella went on, “I’m afraid I have to go now. Your blue-skinned friends are getting a bit too close for comfort.” His smile faded. “One word of advice, Gard: die here, now, or turn your coat again and go back with the Kreelans. Because if your face is seen again in Confederation space, you’ll be arrested and charged with murdering a sovereign planetary leader, not to mention a host of other lesser offenses.” A contemplative look. “I might even be able to arrange it to have you charged with the murder of the General Counsel.” He laughed. “People will hate you so much that they’ll curse your name in their sleep. And your friends will suffer their share of society’s rightful vengeance on your treasonous life.”
“In Her name,” Reza whispered, his blood a burning river of fire through his body, the power that flared within him stayed only by the knowledge that he did not know where to strike, “I shall somehow get you for this. If I die here, my spirit will reach you from beyond the Darkness, Thorella. My spirit and my vengeance shall haunt you until the day you die.”
“How thrilling,” Thorella said, amused. He looked at him as he might a steer that was being sent to the slaughter. “Good-bye, half-breed.”
Somewhere beyond the city, Reza knew, Thorella was probably lifting off in an assault shuttle, trying to join up with the incoming human fleet.
His soul burning with impotent rage, Reza fled the Parliament building and Mallory City just as the first salvoes of the Kreelan bombardment began to fall.
Thirty-Six
Seven hundred men and women stood on the Plain of Aragon in the shadow of the crystal heart’s mountain crater, watching their world burn. As Reza had foretold, the Kreelan battleships now orbiting close to the planet were devastating every human defensive position, turning the cities around them into rubble and flames.
They watched the sky glow bright orange and red as huge crimson, green, and blue bolts of energy crashed into Mallory City from the great Kreelan guns. The waiting Mallorys knew there could be no survivors.
“Surely, Sodom and Gomorra saw no greater wrath from the Lord,” someone said quietly as fire rained down from the skies.
The bombardment went on for what seemed like a long time, the ground trembling with salvo after salvo as the Kreelans pulverized the settlements. The ridge where Reza’s Marines had landed was no more than a smoldering scar in the earth; Walken’s tanks, the artillery, and the First Guards troops that had taken over from Reza’s company were gone, annihilated.
The smoke that poured from the smoking ruins of Mallory City and the Territorial Army garrisons blotted out the sun. A rain, a black rain, fell for a while and left behind an oily mist that swirled about the great plain like a funeral shroud. The Mallorys, cold and frightened, waited for whatever was to come.
“Where is he?” Markham asked. In his enormous right hand was the ax he often used to split logs as big around as a man’s chest. He figured it would kill a Kreelan just as well.
“I don’t know,” Ian said, shivering in the wet chill. “He said he’d come. He’ll be here.”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Markham said after a while. “One hand more or less isn’t going to change things.”
“I am here,” Reza’s voice flowed from behind them. From the glow of the flames that shimmered through the mist, Reza strode toward them like a wraith in human form. The people parted before him as he made his way to the place of leadership, to the front.
“I was beginning to worry about you,” Ian said.
“Belisle is dead,” Reza told him. “Thorella escaped my hand, but justice shall someday find him.” He only half-believed the words. In the human world, people such as Thorella as often as not lived their lives through without the justice they deserved.
“I’m sorry,” Ian told him sincerely. “I know how much your Marines and Counselor Savitch must have meant to you. To see the one responsible for their deaths escape is a hard thing.”
Reza nodded in acceptance of Mallory’s condolences before pushing the matter from his mind. There was much yet to do this day. “Are your people ready as I instructed you?”
Ian nodded. “Axes, knives, picks, anything we could lay our hands on that wasn’t a gun or bomb. I don’t know what good we’ll be, but if nothing else we’re fighting with things we’ve held in our hands all our lives.”
Reza fixed him with a searching gaze. “Are they afraid to die, Ian Mallory?”
Ian looked around him. While he could not see every face among the crowd that had gathered around them, he knew all the names. And when his gaze touched them, they seemed to stand taller, their eyes brightening in the dim light. These people, some from Mallory City, some from a long distance away, many from in between, were his people, his friends. And he knew why they had come, why thousands more would have come if they could. “They didn’t come here to be cowards,” he said proudly, his heart swelling with love for the people he gladly called his own. “They came to protect what is theirs. There won’t be any Mallorys running yellow from the Plain of Aragon today.”
Reza nodded. “Then let it be done,” he said. “Form them in a line, arm’s length apart, facing as I do. Our wait shall not be long, for the enemy shall soon be with us.”
He stared into the mist as Markham bellowed his instructions across the field, Ian Mallory standing thoughtfully beside him. The Mallorys, long used to teamwork in the mines where one man or woman’s life depended on another, had already formed themselves into subunits that reacted quickly to Reza’s commands.
It was amazing, Reza thought, that such fierce warrior spirits dwelt in people who so cherished peace.
In only a few minutes they were ready, the ends of the skirmish line just visible in the mist on either side of Reza. There was no need for a modern Napoleon or Wellington this day, for there would be no maneuvering and no need for tactical genius. When the battle was joined, it would be warrior against warrior, human against Kreelan, in a battle fought with courage and ferocity that only one side could win. A battle to the death.
“They come,” Reza said, the softly spoken words carrying amazingly far. Beside him, men and women gripped their makeshift weapons tighter, adrenaline flowing through their bodies as they prepared to defend the right of their people to exist.
“Where?” Markham growled. “I don’t see–”
“There,” Ian said, nodding to their front. In the early morning mist, shadows danced in the glowing light of the rising sun, gradually taking form as the line of Kreelan warriors strode forward to meet them.
“Good Lord,” Markham whispered. He had never seen a Kreelan before, and suddenly wished he were not seeing them now.
“Are you afraid, Markham?” Reza asked him.
“Naw,” the big man said. “I’d much rather be in the pub, but I’m not afraid. If they get me, fine, but I’ll take a few myself.”
The Kreelan advance stopped. They waited.
“Markham,” Reza said, “you will wait here with the others. Ian, you must come with me, as my First.”
“What are you going to do?” Markham asked.
“We must greet them.” He turned to the big man, who was obviously uneasy about letting Ian get so close to the enemy. “Do not fear; treachery is alien to the Kreela. The greeting is part of the ritual.”
“Be careful then,” Markham said, still not pleased.
“We’ll be back, Nathaniel,” Ian told him.
While Markham issued orders for the line to hold fast, Reza and Ian set out across the no-man’s land separating the two forces, moving toward their opposite number.
As they got closer and more details of the two approaching figures, their opposites from the Kreelan line,
