In Her Name

robes, the thin gold collar gleaming from around Her neck. Reza could see the black mourning marks that ran from her eyes like rivers of sorrow against the snow white hair that lay in carefully coiled braids around her shoulders. Her breast rose and fell slowly, slowly, as her lungs labored on, and Her broken heart forced life through unwilling veins.

Turning back to Tara-Khan, he challenged, “And by what right do you stand before me?”

Tara-Khan’s eyes followed Reza’s to the still form of the vessel of Keel-Tath’s spirit. “I stand here as Her last guardian and protector, an instrument of Her will,” he said quietly. “This is my honor, Reza, to defend Her. The others are gone now. Only I remain.” He turned his eyes back to Reza. “Long have I slept beside Her spirit in the Darkness until this, the day of redemption, of the final combat. It is my honor to see that you are worthy.”

“And if you slay me this day,” Reza asked, “what is to become of Her?”

“The Empress shall perish,” Tara-Khan rasped miserably, “and with Her the Empire, our very souls cast into the pit of emptiness from which there shall be no escape for all eternity.” He smiled. “But do not fear, young one,” he said. “I have listened to your heart, your spirit; your love is true. But this, your final covenant with Her, must be made afresh in blood. This is as She long ago willed, and so shall it be.”

“Let me pass, Tara-Khan,” Reza implored him. “There has been enough death this day. Let me reach Her, that the lost may be saved, that the Empire shall not perish.”

Setting his hand upon the grip of his great sword, whose blade had slain countless foes in ages past, Tara- Khan replied, “Fated by Her own hand were you to be here this day, to fulfill the Prophecy. But beware: there are no guarantees. I can pass none until they are proven worthy, until they can best my sword.”

As the fire spread through his veins, his eyes taking in his dying Empress, his love, one last time, Reza hissed, “Then let it be done.”

And the thunder of clashing swords filled the arena.

* * *

Thorella cautiously made his way up the ramp into the Golden Pearl, his sidearm held at the ready, his finger tensed on the trigger. Behind him, Lieutenant Riggs’s Marines waited uncertainly in their defensive perimeter around the yacht, the roar of the command ship still loud in their ears as it reversed course, abandoning them in the huge hangar as it sought to avoid a possible ambush. None of them were thrilled with the idea of being stranded up here, still so far from even the closest regiment should they need help.

On his solitary reconnaissance, Thorella was completely uninterested in what his men thought. He was concerned only with what he found – or did not find – on the Golden Pearl. It did not take him long to find the bodies of the flight deck crew, holes drilled neatly through their chests by hand blasters. Even more cautious now, he went on to find the butchered remains of the ISS guards that he had left to take care of Mackenzie and Camden. Still, there was no sign of anyone who was still alive. Could Mackenzie and Camden have somehow taken over the ship and brought it here? Impossible, he thought to himself. But, still…

Slowly, sweat beading on his brow, he reentered the main corridor and began to make his way aft, toward sickbay and engineering.

“Sir,” Riggs reported excitedly from outside, “the patrol we sent up the main hall has detected a small group of the enemy not far from here.” To Riggs, the enemy was anyone who was not specifically designated as friendly.

“Details?” Thorella growled, annoyed that his concentration was being diverted from his search of the ship, but somehow relieved that someone had finally seen some activity from the Kreelans.

Riggs patched through the patrol leader. “It appears to be some kind of, I don’t know, a royal hall or something, sir,” reported the staff sergeant who was leading the patrol. “It’s huge, like nothing I’ve ever–”

“The enemy, sergeant,” Thorella snapped. “Tell me about the enemy!”

“Uh, yes, sir,” the woman replied. “Five individuals, sir. At the very top of a big, I don’t know, a pyramid, like.” Pause. “But I could swear that four of them look like our people.”

“What do you mean, ‘our people?’” Thorella demanded. Any thoughts of exploring the Golden Pearl further were rapidly fading.

“Humans, sir,” said the staff sergeant, reporting what she could make out through her image enhancers. “Two males and two females. One of the males is in Marine combat dress, one of the females in Navy uniform. The two others are in civvies of some kind. But the fifth one is definitely Kreelan, but she looks kind of small.”

“About the size of a human teenager?” Thorella asked, his face contorting into a rictus of ice-cold rage.

Pause. “Now that you mention it, yes, sir, that’s what she looks like. A young Kreelan–”

“Get them!” he choked.

“Sir?” Riggs cut in over the confused staff sergeant.

“You heard me!” Thorella raged as he whirled, running back down the corridor toward the hatchway. Now he knew what had happened to Borge: he had never made it off the doomed Warspite. “Get them! They’re renegades, they killed the president!” Thorella did not need a body for evidence. He knew for sure that Borge was dead. Precisely how he had gotten that way was of no further concern. All that mattered now was that his own ascension to power was finally cleared of the last obstacle, his despicable father. He just needed to be sure that Reza Gard and his accomplices were noted in the history books as President Borge’s murderers, and himself, the avenger. “And I want them alive!” He would not be denied the fulfillment of his long-lived vendetta.

Outside, Riggs felt his blood turn to ice. Such an outrage could not go unpunished. Two presidents, murdered? It was unthinkable. “Yes, sir! Sergeant Khosa,” he ordered, “open fire! Pin them down, but do not – repeat, do not – shoot to kill. We’re on our way.”

* * *

Nicole stood close behind Shera-Khan. Lightly, she put a hand on his shoulder. He did not flinch away. “Do you… feel anything, Shera-Khan?” she asked as they all stared into the light that swirled and writhed like a living thing.

He shook his head. “I am empty,” he said bleakly. “I cannot hear my father’s song; I cannot touch his soul.”

“How will we know if he’s successful,” Eustus asked, “or… if he fails?”

“If the Empress dies,” Shera-Khan said, “this–” he gestured toward the light, “–will be no more, and Darkness shall fall upon the sun. All shall end; there shall be no more.”

“Shera-Khan,” Braddock said quietly, “I’ve known your father for a long time, and I know how much he loves her, and I know how much you must love her. But, even if she dies, the universe will still go on. You’ll still be alive and well, and–”

“You do not understand,” Shera-Khan interrupted. “She is not an individual. She is all of us. Our souls and spirits are bound to Her. Even now, now that I cannot feel Her or any others of my kind, should She perish, I shall surely die also. With Her last breath, so shall the Empire perish from the Universe. My father bade me come with you should he fail; he did this out of kindness and hope. But should the Empress perish, so shall I; so shall all my kind.”

Braddock and Enya still did not understand, but Nicole did, and she drew Shera-Khan closer to her. “He will win the Challenge,” she said, a tingling sensation running through her chest at the words. “He must.”

“Hey,” Eustus said from behind them. Unable to watch the eye-searing light anymore, he had turned to study the rest of the throne room. Now, as he watched Riggs’s Marines darting in through the entrance they themselves had used, advancing on the great stairway, he almost wished he hadn’t. “I think we’ve got company.”

“Who–”

“Down!” Eustus cried, throwing the others to the floor of the dais just as a hail of energy bolts blasted chunks from the stairway below and ricocheted from the crystalline dome above.

* * *

Reza hissed as Tara-Khan’s sword slashed through his armor, drawing blood from his shoulder.

“Well do you fight, young one,” Tara-Khan told him through gritted teeth, for Reza’s sword had found its mark on occasion also, “but still do you have much to learn.”

For what seemed like hours the two had fought, caught in a cycle of desperate attrition, one to save the future, the other to slaughter imperfection, unworthiness. Both were perfect in their craft, unable to inflict a decisive blow, only able to harm. To hurt, to bleed.