She felt his hands tenderly grip her shoulders, but for a long time she could say nothing, a scream of raw pain issuing from her throat like a wall of water exploding from a breached dam as he tried to turn her over. After a time, it subsided into a dull throb that pulsed with every beat of her heart, and her mind was finally able to command her tongue to form words that Reza might hear, might understand.
“I… I think my back’s broken, Reza,” she whimpered. She hated the way she sounded, helpless, terrified, but she could not deny, even to herself, that it was true. “Thorella…” She cringed at the sound of the man’s name, even from her own lips, “Thorella beat me… he…” She could not say what else he had done to her.
“Hush,” Reza said, biting back the wave of black rage that rose in his soul. “Be still. I will–”
“Father,” Shera-Khan called from the next room, his voice conveying concern, apprehension, but no fear; there was no threat to him in there. “There is another like her in here.”
“What…” Jodi rasped, “what did he say?”
“Nothing,” Reza lied. “Be still.”
Uncoiling like a snake about to strike, Reza covered the distance to where his son stood in three paces.
“Eustus,” he whispered, his heart catching in his throat. His friend hung in the air, suspended from the heavy chandelier above. His tormentors had tied his elbows together behind his back with a thin metal cable, pulled so tight that it had cut into the flesh of his arms, and then hoisted him from the ground. Then they had beaten him with what could only be a Kreelan grakh’ta, the whip with seven barbed tails like the one that had once scourged Esah-Zhurah’s back.
Handing his sword to his son, he said, “Cut him down.” Then he held onto Eustus’s motionless body while Shera-Khan sliced the cruel metal wire that bound his father’s friend. Ever so gently, Reza carried him into the other room, laying him next to Jodi so he could tend to them both. With a claw of his right hand, he severed the wire that bound Eustus’s elbows, letting his shoulders and back spring back into something like their normal position.
Eustus let out a groan.
“Reza,” Jodi asked, “what’s going on? What is it?” Lying as she was, she could not see any of the three other living people in the room, only two of the mangled bodies of the ISS men who had raped her. Somehow, it was not as comforting a sight as she had at first thought it would be.
“It is Eustus,” he told her as he pointed out to Shera-Khan a medikit that hung on one of the bulkheads. The boy immediately scrambled to retrieve it.
“How… how is he?”
“Alive,” Reza said softly, fighting to keep his hands from trembling with the anger coursing through his veins. Thoughts of dark vengeance intermingled with compassion for his injured and beaten friends, friends who had become his family in this strange world that called itself humanity.
Taking the medikit from Shera-Khan, he told the boy in the New Tongue, “Go to the flight deck and get help. Tell them that Jodi and Eustus are aboard, and are hurt badly.”
Shera-Khan nodded in acknowledgment, then bolted for the flight deck at a dead run.
In the meantime, Reza tore open the medikit and began to do what little he could until the others could help him get their friends into the ship’s sickbay.
Fifty-Five
Above the Kreelan Homeworld, ships danced and died. But the one-sided slaughter of Kreelan ships that had been the hope of the now-deceased President Borge had become far fiercer than anyone, except Reza, could have predicted. The Kreelans did not fight with their usual expert skill, but they fought with the tenacity of cornered tigresses, and the tide of slaughter was beginning to turn against the invaders.
And yet, despite the carnage that was gutting both of the great fleets, the humans had managed to secure a tenuous perimeter around the solitary moon. Since the heavy ships and their big guns were still engaged with their Kreelan counterparts, and so could not be brought to bear for an orbital bombardment, the task force that had been assigned the moon had begun to disgorge hundreds of dropships. Thousands of Marines were deploying to attack the single built-up area on the moon’s surface, a mountainous city that dwarfed the greatest such construct ever conceived by Man.
Leading them was recently promoted Major General Markus Thorella.
“Sir,” reported one of the comms technicians, “the Third Fusiliers have landed at–” he read off coordinates that corresponded to a flashing blip on Thorella’s tactical display “–and report no enemy present, no resistance. Colonel Roentgen reports ‘proceeding toward primary objective.’”
Thorella frowned. He should have been elated that his troops were making such swift progress, but the lack of all resistance – of even sighting any Kreelans at all – thus far on the moon fundamentally disturbed him, especially since this was the fifth regiment on the ground, and the previous four had made nearly identical reports. “Advise all assault elements,” he said, “to proceed with caution.”
He turned to his deputy division commander for maneuver, the woman who was directly responsible for coordinating the activities of the units disembarking from the ships and moving on the ground. “This is too bloody strange,” Thorella told her. “That place should be crawling with Kreelans, confused ones or otherwise. Where could they all have gotten to?”
“Withdrawn to ambush sites?” she suggested.
Thorella shook his head. “No, that’s something we would do. The Kreelans prefer head-to-head fighting, whatever the terms.”
“But this must be an extraordinary situation for them,” she pointed out, simultaneously directing another regiment toward its destination on the moon below, the stylus in her hand marking the destination, which was then sent over the data link. “If Reza Gard can be believed, they’ve never faced an invasion before.”
Thorella considered the thought. “No,” he concluded, more to himself than for the other officer’s benefit. “Something else is going on, but what?” He had to know, he thought to himself.
Turning to the command ship’s captain, he snapped, “Get us down there, now.”
“There is nothing more we can do for her now,” Reza said quietly as he finished programming the ship’s autodoc to do what it could for Jodi. “We can ease her pain, but that is all.” With the help of the automated ship’s surgeon, Reza had managed to numb Jodi’s spine above the point where it had been severed, confusing her brain into believing that the great nerve pathway merely slept, and was not utterly destroyed halfway down her back, just below her heart. A more general painkiller shielded her from the many other points of damage that would have brought overwhelming pain as the shock slowly wore off.
“Will I be all right?” Jodi asked softly, unexpectedly regaining consciousness, if just for a moment.
“Yes, my friend,” Reza replied as he watched the monitor, but he did not – could not – turn to face her. “You will be as good as new.” He looked at her then and tried to smile. Failed.
Jodi smiled up at him. She knew he had just told the first lie of his adult life, and she felt honored somehow that he had done it for her, to make her feel better.
“I tried to stop them,” Eustus said bitterly. His injuries, less severe than Reza had at first feared, had been dealt with quickly by the ship’s electronic surgeon. He still carried terrible bruises, but that affected his looks more than his health. His greatest injury was guilt at not having been able to help Jodi, at having to helplessly watch the things they did to her. His own pain was nothing. Even without his second sight, Reza could feel the guilt feeding on his friend’s soul. “But–”
“Eustus,” Jodi said, opening the one eye that was not swollen shut. Sleep was not far away, a drug induced coma that would save her from the pain, but she would not let that stop her from comforting her friend. “Eustus,” she said again, reaching out with a hand which held only broken fingers, now dead to any further sensation, “it’s not
