“You’ll do anything that I want anyway, Camden,” Thorella said harshly, his breathing now labored. “And after I fuck her, I might just do the same to you.”
Too rushed by his raging lust to use the knife, Thorella dropped it to the floor and used his bare hands to rip open the back of Jodi’s blouse and its built in bra. He tore away the fabric, ripping it from her body to let it fall to the floor like trash. His free hand groped for her breasts, squeezing them hard, bruising the tender flesh, pinching the nipples until they bled.
Jodi bit her tongue to keep from crying out. She tasted a fresh surge of copper as blood flooded her mouth.
But there was nothing to be done. She felt Thorella’s hand working at his pants, freeing the pulsating serpent within. She grunted in agony as he forced himself into her with a brutal thrust, crushing her thighs against the table’s edge.
The last thing she heard was Eustus, screaming for Thorella to stop, his voice oddly muffled by Thorella’s frenzied panting.
But then her mind shut down, locking itself away in a tiny place where light and love ruled over the darkness of men’s hearts, and the world was still kind.
Fifty-Three
From the end of the flag bridge where the main view screen was located, Borge began his speech to the ships that had reached their final rendezvous point before making the hyperspace jump that would take them to the Kreelan homeworld.
“Men and women of the Fleet,” he began, his face beaming with what was both genuine sincerity and a maniacal belief in his vision of his own empire-to-be, “this day shall be one not long forgotten in the history of the Confederation. For a century have we found ourselves locked in mortal combat with an alien enemy, an enemy who attacked us for no reason, and who attempted to exterminate our people, an attempt that has been in vain. We have paid our way in blood to the threshold where we now stand, and it is time now to make the enemy pay in kind a thousand-fold.” He turned to L’Houillier. “Admiral, you may give the word.”
L’Houillier did not hesitate. “Prepare to jump,” he ordered. He exchanged a glance with Zhukovski, who stood unobtrusively near one of the bridge’s three exits.
A moment later, Zhukovski quietly disappeared.
Amid the cheering throughout the three thousand ships of the great fleet, klaxons blared to announce the imminent jump into hyperspace. The pilots of the hundreds of fighters and attack craft that had been launched at this last rendezvous point snuggled up close to their mother ships, trying to make sure they were captured in the surrounding hyperdrive field and not left behind when the bigger ships jumped. It was a terribly dangerous maneuver, but Laskowski’s plan had called for it, and the president had ordered it done.
L’Houillier turned to Laskowski. “Admiral, execute the jump,” he ordered.
“Aye, aye, sir,” she said sharply, turning to the battery of fleet controllers who were clustered around a myriad of consoles in a darkened alcove at the rear of the flag bridge. “Execute!” she snapped.
A moment later, under control of the
The jump was a short one, Reza noted silently. He felt the first tremor in his flesh that had always announced to him that they had bridged the gap between normal space and what was beyond, followed a few short minutes later by the second tremor indicating their return to normal space.
“We have arrived,” he told Tesh-Dar and Shera-Khan. “We are home. It will soon be time for us to depart this place.”
“The animals will not allow us to leave, my son,” Tesh-Dar noted. For some reason she could not explain, her health had markedly improved since her joining with Reza’s human friend. Perhaps it was the breath of purity that flowed from the woman’s vision, a legacy that Reza had left her when his blood had mingled with hers; perhaps it was only the final gasp of her body as it sought to stave off Death for but a while longer.
“And so shall it be,” Reza answered. “My honor do I forfeit for Her sake.” He looked away. “No sacrifice may be too great.”
He felt Tesh-Dar’s hand on his arm. “Your honor is your love for Her, Reza,” she told him gently. “Your debt to your forebears have you paid, ever since the very first day that you returned to them from the Empire.”
“I am with you, Father,” Shera-Khan told him quietly, but with a solemnity in his voice that Reza would always remember. His son would be a great warrior someday. If only he survived.
“You honor your mother well, my son,” he said.
The lights suddenly dimmed, and the entire hull reverberated with artificial thunder.
“The battle is joined,” Reza said, coming to his feet. “Soon, now. We must be prepared.”
“
“But–”
“Another word and you are relieved,” he snarled. “You can go and have your beloved president relieve me of duty, but until then you are under my command and by God you will follow my orders!”
Such an exchange normally might have wrought complete, dumbfounded silence on the flag bridge. But even the curses of the Grand Admiral were lost in the frantic hubbub of the flag and ship’s bridge staffs as they sought to make order out of the chaos that had erupted when the Armada dropped back into normal space after the last jump.
In the background was the main flag bridge viewscreen, and what it showed no human eyes had ever before witnessed, nor would they again. An assemblage of Confederation warships that swarmed through the skies of the alien homeworld, clashing with an equal, if not superior, armada that bore the runes of the enemy that Humanity had been fighting for nearly a century. Dozens of ships, most of them Kreelan, had already died, their death throes marked by flaring explosions that left nothing behind but slagged hulks and clouds of iridescent gas. Tens of thousands of energy bolts, crimson and green, joined hundreds of ships in the blink of an eye, bringing death to some, victory to others. And amid the great warships darted clouds of fighters.
But the human ships were at a great tactical disadvantage. In the initial deployment formation that Laskowski had chosen, the conical groups of human ships could only bring their forward batteries to bear, while many of the Kreelan ships, disorganized as they were, could bring their entire broadsides into action against the invaders. On the oceans of ancient Earth, this had been known as “crossing the T.” It was a disastrous disadvantage that L’Houillier was desperately trying to redress.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Laskowski responded woodenly, for the first time sensing that all might not go as she had planned. Without another word from L’Houillier, she turned to the operations section and began barking out the Grand Admiral’s orders, feeling not so much resentment as a growing sense of fear as they fought to reorganize the fleet.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the three huge task forces began to change their shape, from the roughly conical
