In Her Name

your fault. It’s Thorella’s. If you want to blame someone, blame that bastard, not yourself.”

Eustus took her hand in his as if it were an intricate, delicate sculpture of blown glass. “Jodi…” he closed his eyes, fighting the tears.

“I will find him,” Reza told her quietly. “I swear in Her name that he shall not escape me again.”

Slowly, she shook her head. “No, Reza,” she whispered. “We’ve come too far… given up too much, for you to throw it away in an act of revenge. You have to save your Empress, and give your own people – and ours – a chance to survive. Ships and people are dying out there, and you’re the only one who can stop it.” Her mangled lips managed a smile that tore at Reza’s heart. “Besides, you have a son to look out for now. What will happen to him if you throw your life away after Thorella?”

That thought had not occurred to him; he had not yet really begun to think like a father, to realize that until Shera-Khan well understood the Way and how to follow it, he, Reza, must guide him. And it would take both of them to save the Empress.

“The truth do you speak,” Reza admitted grudgingly.

“Reza,” Nicole called through the ship’s intercom, “we are hitting the atmosphere. I need you to guide me.”

“Coming,” he answered immediately. He felt most sorry for Nicole: the only one among them qualified and able to pilot the ship, with Braddock keeping her company, she had to remain at the helm as her best friend lay grievously injured, dying. But there was nothing to be done. The ship’s autopilot was not good enough to bring them unscathed through the maze of ships blasting at one another. Only Nicole’s skill had made that possible, and even so, the Pearl’s hull now sported a score of burn marks where salvoes from human and Kreelan ships alike had grazed her hull through the weakening shields.

“Good… luck,” Jodi said, as the ship’s computerized surgeon boosted the level of painkillers in her system. She closed her eyes, and her mangled hand, still clutched carefully in Eustus’s own, released its tiny, childlike grip.

Reza’s sandaled feet were silent as Death upon the deck as he made his way forward, Shera-Khan close behind him, leaving Eustus and Enya to tend to Jodi. He did not look back.

The view from the Pearl’s flight deck brought tears to Reza’s eyes. The Imperial City, Her home for thousands of generations, lay burning. Dim, almost forgotten memories from his youth of another shattered world, of a young boy orphaned by strangers from the sky, clouded his mind’s eye. Streamers of flame reached as high as mountains, as hundreds of assault boats and fighters swarmed over the great buildings and spires. They fired their weapons randomly, and dropped bombs and cluster munitions into any portal or avenue that could have harbored any Kreelan defenders. Pillars of smoke blocked out many parts of the city, but Reza’s imagination easily filled in the blanks. Over one hundred thousand years, he thought bitterly, tomorrow shall be nothing more than smoldering ash.

“Father,” Shera-Khan said from behind him, the boy’s hand gingerly touching Reza’s shoulder. His voice was brittle with fear. Never before, even during the Great Chaos before Keel-Tath’s ascension, had harm come to the Empress Moon. But now Shera-Khan and Reza were witness to its systematic destruction.

Reza put a hand over his son’s, to reassure the boy as well as himself, although he said nothing; he did not trust his voice not to display the fear he himself felt.

Can Esah-Zhurah still be alive? he wondered. And what if she is? What is even the Empress to do against… this?

“How is Jodi?” Nicole asked from beside him, her voice carefully controlled. She had stopped worrying about either Kreelan defensive fire or being attacked by the scores of human ships prowling about. From the chatter she had been monitoring from the landing force, the Kreelans on the surface were offering no resistance at all, and the other human ships had not been alerted to the Pearl’s escape. But she had not stopped worrying about Jodi.

“She…” Reza paused, not sure how to tell her. Death and suffering had been his constant companions since childhood, but this was different. Simply blurting the wounding truth was somehow impossibly difficult. “If we do not get her to a healer soon, she will surely die,” he finally said. “The ship can only ease her pain, no more.”

“And if we take her in time to someone who can help her,” Nicole finished for him, “the Empress will die, and we will all be finished.”

Reza only nodded.

Nicole stared through the viewscreen at the glowing hell below that was rushing up to meet them. “We have no choices left, Reza,” she said grimly. “If there is a chance of you stopping this battle, this war, we must take it, no matter what the cost to ourselves.” She looked at him hard, and he thought he saw a glimmer of Esah-Zhurah’s strength in her eyes, and he wanted desperately simply to reach out and touch her, that he might touch a tiny part of the woman he loved. But he could not, dared not. “The tide of the battle is changing,” she told him. She had been keeping watch on the tactical display as a staggering increase in the number of human ships was added to the casualty list, while fewer and fewer Imperial ships were being destroyed. “More Kreelan warships are arriving all the time, just as you predicted. The main battle group, most of our ships, is scattered, cut off from its jump point. They are being torn apart. Our only hope now is through you. Just show me the way.”

Just as they emerged from another pillar of smoke, Reza saw their destination. “There,” he said, pointing to a crystalline pyramid that rose over five kilometers in the sky. “The Throne Room is at the top of the Great Tower. That is our destination. We must find a landing bay as high up as possible.”

“Reza, this is not a fighter, remember,” Nicole reminded him as the computer scanned and rejected most of the bays as being too small. “We cannot land in a shoe box.”

“Could we not use the Empress’s portal?” Shera-Khan asked, pointing to a large bay complex that also happened to be the highest on the tower. “It will lead us directly to the Throne Room.”

“It is closed, Shera-Khan,” Nicole said, looking at the information the computer was showing from the scanners.

“No longer,” the boy announced, touching his collar in a peculiar fashion. “Behold.”

Less than two kilometers away now, the iris door of the great portal suddenly began to open, exposing a warmly lit bay that could have held a dozen ships the size of the Pearl, but that now lay empty and barren.

“All who are taught to fly as I have been are given a special device to open the portal,” he explained proudly, “that any may serve Her when She calls.”

“Well do you serve Her this day, my son,” Reza said. He did not know until that moment that Shera-Khan had been trained as a pilot, no doubt under Tesh-Dar’s tutelage. He only mourned that he had never known him until these last few desperate hours. How much I have missed.

With a precision that matched the grace of the big yacht, Nicole brought the Pearl inside the bay. She moved the ship in as far as she could to avoid damage from the raiding ships outside, and to put them closer to the many doorways that lay within. From her last glance at the tactical display of the fleet’s desperate plight, every second would count against them from now on.

“Shall I close the portal?” Shera-Khan asked, his hand at his collar.

“No,” Nicole advised, just as Reza was about to say the opposite. “We may need to leave quickly.”

If we fail, Reza thought silently, we will have nowhere to go. “Let it be, then,” he said. “We must go.”

The others were waiting for them at the main hatch.

“Reza…” Nicole said, her gaze straying down the main hall toward the sickbay.

Reza nodded. “We shall wait for you,” he told her as he slammed his fist down on the button to open the hatch and drop the ramp to the deck below. He did not offer to go with her; their farewells to one another would be a private matter.

“I will not be long,” she told him.

Nicole entered the sickbay knowing what she would find, but not really prepared for it. To do that would have been to do the impossible. She bit back a small cry as she looked at what had become of Jodi’s beautiful face, now little more than a hideous mask of torn flesh, glued loosely to a bruised and battered skull.

“Oh, Jodi,” she whispered. “What have they done to you…”

Her friend opened her eyes in the way someone might when returning to the world from a vacant but pleasant dream. “Nikki,” she said, “you shouldn’t be here… you don’t have time…”