him disappeared.
Deliha Rabat stood at the edge of a great plain, upon which stood a city that only one human had ever visited.
“Where are we, Reza?” she asked in wonder.
“This is the Homeworld of the Kreela,” he answered from behind her. “That is the city where the First Empress was born, and where I first fought for the woman who would become my love.”
She noted with pleasure that he was not speaking Standard; he was speaking Kreelan – the Old Tongue she knew now – and she understood it. She suddenly forgot about the city as her mind began to receive the first trickle of Reza’s thoughts, his knowledge. She looked around her, at the mountains, the magenta sky, at the Empress moon above. The trickle soon turned into a torrent, filling her with all the images and memories of an alien lifetime. She felt the knowledge pouring into her, a fountain that seemed endless. She drank all that he had to offer her, and still demanded more. All that he knew was hers.
“No,” she heard his voice say. “Not everything.”
“What do you mean?” she demanded in a tongue she had never before spoken. “Give it to me! I want it all!”
“I warned you, doctor, but you would not listen. And now you shall pay the price for your vanity. Behold!”
She whirled around. Behind her should have been the mountains surrounding the valley that was the birthplace of the Empire so many eons ago. But as she watched, the great peaks disappeared behind a veil of fire, a wall of boiling scarlet flame that looked like bloody lava. “What is it? Tell me!”
“It is the Bloodsong of my people, human,” Reza answered contemptuously, “the song of Her will. You and your machines can only comprehend the barest essence of the Way, of our lives. You can catalog the sights, sounds, smells, even the language of Her Children. But you do not understand our soul, or the power of the Empress, the power of Her spirit that dwells within us all. The Bloodsong is what unites us, all who have ever lived since the death of the First Empress. You wish to understand us? Then you must face the fire!”
“No!” she screamed as the wall of flame roared closer, devouring all that lay before it in a symphony of exploding trees and scorching rock. “I’m turning this off!” she screamed as she tried to flee back to her reality.
“Too late,” Reza bellowed, and she felt his hands pinning her arms. She saw the silvery talons of his armored gauntlets pierce her flesh, felt the warm trickle of blood running down her arms. She struggled in vain. His breath was hot on her neck. “I warned you, you fool!” he shouted in her ear. “And now shall you know the truth! You wanted everything, and now you shall have it!”
As the wall of flame grew nearer, towering in the sky to blot out the glimmering Empress moon, Rabat could hear another sound above the din of the advancing apparition: voices. Thousands of them. Millions. All calling to her. They were angry, enraged. She looked into the flames and saw their terrible claws reaching for her, their mouths opened wide to reveal the fangs waiting to tear out her throat. Her skin began to blister in the heat, and she could smell the stench of her hair as it smoldered and then suddenly burst into flame.
She screamed, and kept on screaming as her skin and flesh began to boil away. Her eyes bulged and then exploded from her skull as the flames roared over her, the ethereal claws of the ancient warriors tearing at her flesh, at her soul, devouring her spirit as the world around her turned the color of blood.
“Reza! Jesus, are you all right?”
He felt hands moving along his body, tearing away the monitors and probes.
“Where is she?” he rasped. “Rabat.”
“Looks like the good doctor’s had it,” Jodi said quietly. She had to look away from the body. The woman’s face was frozen in a nightmarish grimace of agony, her hands clutching her breast as if her heart had exploded in her chest. In fact, as a coroner would ascertain some time later, it had.
Shaking her head, she turned her attention back to Reza. “Come on,” she told him, helping him up from the table. She had managed to figure out how to turn off the suppressor field holding him to the table. The rest of the machines had apparently malfunctioned when Rabat died. She kissed him, then held him tightly. “I’m so glad I found you,” she whispered, trying not to cry.
He smiled as he wrapped his arms around her, holding her shaking body gently as he kissed her hair. “I am, too, my friend.”
After a moment, she unwillingly pushed him away. “We’ve got to get our asses out of here right now,” she told him. “We’re both in really deep shit.”
“What has happened?”
“You’re up on a rap for murdering the president, I’m your accomplice – helping you to get out of the hospital, no less – and Markus Thorella isn’t really Markus Thorella at all. He’s Senator – now President – Borge’s son and an impostor. That’s the scoop in a nutshell. Aren’t you glad to hear it?” Jodi helped him to his feet and handed him some clothes. “Internal Security is crawling everywhere like a bunch of ants, and they picked up Nicole and Tony for questioning.”
“What?” Reza asked incredulously as he pulled on the blue sweater and black pants that Jodi had brought for him, then some boots. Obviously, his uniformed days were over. Jodi was not wearing hers, either. “How could they?”
Jodi snorted. “Easy. Borge’s the president now. I don’t think he plans on doing anything with them except to try and lure us in, but I don’t think they’ll go for it. Anyway, he’s declared martial law across the entire continent, which makes things that much more difficult for us.”
When Reza was dressed, Jodi handed him a blaster. “Here,” she said, “you’re going to need this later. I already had to use it on the way in.” She led him out and down a corridor that was deserted except for three bodies and the stink of burned flesh.
“How did you get in?” Reza asked. “How did you even find where they had taken me?”
Jodi shrugged. “An old friend of mine is helping us. She has… connections.”
“Can you trust her?” Reza asked as they moved through a portal and into a tiny lobby. The research center where they had taken him was in a distant rural settlement that Rabat had thought would be sufficiently isolated to avoid any unwanted scrutiny. And, with Reza under her control, she had convinced Thorella and Borge that a lot of guards would just raise the visibility of the facility and the risk of exposure. And so, there had been only three guards. Had been.
“I don’t know for sure,” Jodi replied. She hopped into the pilot’s seat of the waiting skimmer, closing the hatches after Reza had climbed in after her. “She certainly has a score to settle with our friend Thorella, though.” She looked at Reza as the skimmer responded to her deft touch, quickly becoming airborne and heading east. “It doesn’t really matter, anyway,” she told him. “I had no one else to turn to.”
Reza frowned. He was missing something. “But why would Borge be after you?” he asked.
Jodi smiled. And then she told him the entire tale of the man who would be president and his misbegotten son.
Forty-Five
President Borge did not rage. He appeared calm and cool, despite the massive confusion that swirled around him as the entire security network of planet Earth worked to find and kill – Borge had decided to dispense with any remaining pleasantries – Reza Gard and Jodi Mackenzie.
But there was a slight problem: they both had disappeared. Mackenzie had not been seen since the afternoon
