In Her Name

that they were no longer attached to his arm. Thorella’s hand, still clutching the gun, was falling – so slowly falling – toward the deck, the stump of his arm now shooting blood at her instead of searing energy. Curious, she followed the crimson stream, noting with some small surprise that it intersected a gaping hole where her abdomen had once been. She touched the ragged edge with a numbed hand. Warm. Wet. Oh, God.

Reza stood still a moment, stunned by the horrible misfortune of his timing. A second sooner, he raged to himself, and I could have saved her. He turned his attention to Thorella. “I should have killed you a long time ago,” Reza said softly through the smoke that rose around them from the shot that had smashed Jodi’s body.

“You have to take me back for trial,” Thorella cried as he tried to hold the stump of his arm with his good hand, Reza’s shrekka having severed it just below the elbow. He nodded toward the screen where Nicole’s horrified face still looked on. “You can’t kill me,” he gloated, “not with the whole fleet watching. It’d be murder.”

“Enough.” Reza had long debated how he would kill Thorella: slowly, the way he deserved to die for all the evil he had done, or quickly, mercifully. Reza decided on the latter, not to show Thorella mercy, but because he could simply stand this horrible pestilence no more.

But just as he was about to take Thorella’s head with his sword, he heard a voice that tore open his heart.

“Reza…”

He turned to look at Jodi’s pleading face. He hesitated, only a fraction of a second, but it was enough for Thorella to bolt through the still open door and disappear down the corridor.

“Reza,” Jodi whispered. “How…?”

“Do not speak,” he quieted her as he momentarily pushed Thorella from his mind. He cradled her gently as he fought not to look at what was left of her once beautiful body. For the first and only time in his adult life, he sincerely hoped there somewhere was a Hell like old Father Hernandez had believed existed, and that Thorella would fall there to burn forever. If nothing else, Reza would make sure that he would get to find out. “There is yet time. I can take you to the Empress. She can heal you–”

“No,” Jodi shook her head weakly. “It’s better this way, Reza. I think… my number’s come up… I ought to take it like a lady.” She looked up at him. “Tell me… Nicole will be… safe?”

He nodded. “She will. For always. The Empress will let no harm come to her. Ever.”

Jodi smiled. Nicole would be safe. That was all that mattered.

“Reza?” Nicole’s brittle voice called from the display beside him, yet from hundreds of thousands of leagues away. “You’ve got to get out of there.”

“I cannot leave Jodi–”

“Reza,” Nicole interrupted him, “your sun is going to explode any minute now. You’ve got to get out! We did not know how to tell you, we only found out for ourselves from Jodi before… before…”

“The Empress knows of this,” he told her. “It is part of our future. We await it. But it is time for you and the others to leave here, Nicole.” Reza felt a ripple in his bones. It was about to happen. “Quickly.” He looked at her one last time. “May thy Way be long and glorious, my friend.”

“Detonation!” someone cried on Sandhurst’s bridge. On the main viewscreen, the Kreelan sun flared with crimson brilliance as its corona began to blow outward and the deeper layers of the stricken star began to expand behind it.

“Jodi…” Nicole said, but Jodi was no longer there to talk to. The image had suddenly filled with static. Both of her best friends were gone.

* * *

Aboard the Golden Pearl, Reza watched Nicole’s image fade as the dying star’s energy was released, destroying the data link to Sandhurst.

“Reza, you’ve got to leave me,” Jodi implored him quietly. “Please.”

Still holding her gently, he could feel the life running from her body like the last grains of sand from an hourglass. “Do not fear for me,” he said softly as he kissed her hair. “I promised that I would always be there for you, remember?” He closed his eyes, his heart aching for her. “I won’t leave you now,” he whispered.

“Thank you, Reza,” she sighed, cradled against his shoulder. “I… love you.”

“I love you, too, Jodi,” he told her softly, fighting back his tears as he felt her spirit slip away, leaving her body an empty shell. After kissing her tenderly on the lips, he gently laid her body down on the deck.

With a fleeting glance at the display on the engineering console that showed Thorella on the flight deck, Reza smiled grimly at his enemy’s fate, trapped alone on a ship that was doomed by his own hand.

Then he conjured in his mind a vision of his waiting Empress, his love, and vanished from the Golden Pearl to join Her.

All alone now, Markus Thorella hammered at the Pearl’s useless command console as the wall of fire from the exploding star rushed forward to claim him. He was still howling in fear and rage as the ship was torn to atoms.

* * *

“Jodi,” she heard a voice call in the darkness. It was a voice Jodi recognized, one that she had once loved.

“Tanya?” she called, not sure where she was, growing afraid.

“Yes, darling,” Tanya answered from beside her, taking Jodi’s hand. “Don’t be afraid. Everything’s all right now.” Jodi felt the warmth of Tanya’s lips on hers, and suddenly saw her face, young and beautiful as it had once been, but without the shadow over her soul. “Come on,” Tanya told her, smiling as she led Jodi by the hand toward a golden glow the color of a sunrise. “Everyone’s waiting for you.”

And together they stepped into the light, leaving the darkness behind forever.

* * *

“The Golden Pearl’s gone.” On the tactical display, Nicole watched as the sphere of superheated matter blotted out the tiny icon that had once been a ship and her friends, but that also meant the end of Thorella’s reign of terror. The shock wave reached out ever further, consuming everything in its path.

“Zhirinovski, how many ships are left behind us?”

“None, sir. We’re the last.”

“Captain Jorgensen,” Sinclaire called to the ship’s captain, “are your boats all aboard?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Stand by for jump.”

“Radiation is in the yellow, admiral,” the ops officer warned.

“A moment,” Sinclaire replied, his attention riveted to the chaotic scene on the tactical display. He wondered at the Kreelan fleet now clustered around the homeworld and its strange moon. There were tens of thousands of ships now, some of them unbelievably huge, and more were still jumping in. Lord of All, he thought, why don’t they jump out? The Kreelans on the planet are doomed, but at least the ships could save themselves…

“Jesus,” someone whispered as the stellar matter’s first tendrils brushed the homeworld. The main viewer and tactical display suddenly went dark.

“Overloaded,” someone said somberly.

“Captain Jorgensen,” Sinclaire ordered, his last act before he would allow exhaustion to overtake him, “take us home.”

* * *

The star that had warmed and given life to their world was dying, but even in its death it served the needs of the Empress. Having blinded the primitive electronic eyes of the humans, who were not yet prepared to understand, She made ready to take Her Children on the next part of the journey that was their eternal Way.

The vast fleet of ships was arrayed to capture the necessary energy from their exploding sun and focus it like a great lens upon the Empress moon and the Empress Herself. Reaching out with Her mind and spirit, bending the massive influx of energy to Her will, She opened a gateway in space-time that would not even be theorized by humankind for another fifty-thousand years. As one, Her people – every soul spread across the ten thousand suns of the Empire – passed through it on their first step toward the next phase of their evolution. Had humans witnessed it, they would have thought it nothing more and nothing less than magic.

Beside Her, Reza looked back through the closing portal, wondering at what had been, what could have been.