Valyien Box Set 2, page 23
part #4 of Valyien Series
Cassandra looked up the long march to see that they were approaching a much smaller ziggurat, though still many stories high, at the far end of the chamber. It was built out of a shining gold metal and had a wide set of steps running up its center, meeting various flatter terrace levels, where more of the odd four-legged aliens, each almost nine feet tall with their long necks, stood. Cassandra saw their splaying, mandible mouth parts opening and closing as if tasting the scent of the victims coming toward them.
“What are they doing to them? Where are they going?” Cassandra asked, but the Q’Lot spokesperson said nothing, just regarded the screen with an expression that Cassandra thought was near sadness.
At the top of the ziggurat stood two tall golden columns, taller even than the Valyien, and cast into strange humps and whirls. As she watched, she saw something spark across the void between them. Washes of that same purple and crimson lightening, and suddenly, a fierce gale was blowing out from the cosmic reaction. Light started to flood from the strange device, as drifts of red and blue clouds started to form a vortex.
“That’s a warp field,” Cassandra said in awe. She recognized the way the picture lensed around it, the pillars seeming to fold and distort, the ziggurat blurring and changing magnification. “But that is madness. It’s an open warp field…” she stated in alarm. Cassandra Milan was no great technician or engineer, but she knew just enough to get by. Warp fields were in fact tiny subatomic reactions, happening all the time, but under the right conditions, or subject to truly massive pressures, they could expand at cataclysmic rates. It was believed that black holes were a form of warp field, or that they generated one, and some theorists had even speculated that warp fields were created in the heart of stars, or when they go supernova.
Around a warp field, light was caught and slowed down. Even time itself became a strange impossibility. It was in a warp field that, by applying precisely the right forces at the right time, these qualities could be used to create a tunneling wormhole, and thus enable a warp jump within that ‘removed space’ of the field.
But they were dangerous, Cassandra knew. History was filled with stories of accidents and sometimes cataclysmic explosions as warp cores went wrong. There were also the stranger stories of when the warp cores worked, but malfunctioned—of people arriving in the same place several years out of time, although for them, they just left the previous moment, or of vanishing and never being seen again, not in this universe, anyway.
But why isn’t everyone in that structure, and that structure itself, being torn apart? she thought, before answering herself. It was from old Valyien technology that the Imperial Coalition had discovered how to utilize a warp field. It was from wrecked Valyien engines that they built their first, highly dangerous warp core.
These creatures were the very best at what they did, she thought. If anyone could manipulate an open warp field to such a high degree of precision, it would be them.
But what happened next shocked her. She saw the march start to bunch and slow as the first few lines that had been driven up the ziggurat steps saw what waited for them.
“They can’t mean to…” Cassandra said. Not only was it cruel, it was also paradoxical.
But the waiting Valyien guards jabbed and struck at the line of people with their sharp legs, rising to a bipedal stance to do so. Some of the crowd reacted, tried to run, but they were struck down, leaving just the cowed and demoralized left. In lines of ten or more, they mounted the steps and walked into the warp field.
There were no screams that Cassandra could hear. Maybe there were, but the shriek of the warp winds was too high to hear them. She watched as the slaves of the Valyien were engulfed in the strange, morphing light, and instantly, their forms started to change. All the color and contrast of their physical bodies seemed to go crazy, their edges blurred as they tried to turn back or raise their arms—
The people were disintegrating into shimmering clouds of golden-white light, eddying briefly in their humanoid or alien shapes before being torn apart by the warp vortex.
“But…why are they killing them like that? What good does it do?” she asked in horror as wave after wave of people were thrown into the warp field, and many hundreds if not thousands were sacrificed for some insane Valyien idea.
It was with this scene as the backdrop, with the crimson and purple light highlighting her features, that Cassandra saw the spokesperson Q’Lot turn to her and gesture to the tragedy.
“Energy,” it said at first, gesturing to her body. “Valyien go beyond. Valyien conquer…beyond.”
Cassandra shook, although she didn’t know why. She didn’t understand what the Q’Lot was saying to her, but her mind could still scrabble at the shape of something vast and terrifying. A deep, deep wrong that was so different to anything that she had ever encountered, as the Q’Lot and the Valyien were different to the Imperial Coalition.
There had always been talk of other dimensions, other universes on the other side of the particles and electrons, and existing at the same time somehow of a different order.
“Are you telling me that was where the Valyien went?” Cassandra asked.
“Seeds,” the Q’Lot said, moving one of his more normal long-fingered hands to make a gesture as if pulling something in half. “New soil,” it said seriously, looking back at the grisly scene ahead of them. Cassandra was still trying to comprehend what this meant. That the Valyien had somehow found a way to that other side of the universe? To that other dimension? That they existed in quantum space, but as what? Ghosts? Shades? It couldn’t be anything like what they had been here, in the physical galaxy.
The spokesperson Q’Lot turned to her at last, letting the screen fade back into blackness. If Cassandra was starting to recognize anything at all about these people, then she was starting to see that it was annoyed and sad and very, very serious, as it said to her:
“Valyien lose. Valyien go. Valyien come back.”
10
Uprising
“That’s where they’ll be keeping him,” Erkig murmured in a low growl from his heavy hood. The captain could see that his back still pained him, but he had insisted on coming with Ko, Irie, and Eliard to be the first to break into the arena to free Val. The trio stood in one of the wide, busy cobbled streets of Duric, dressed in heavy canvas robes of a deep ochre and tan color.
‘Everyone will think that we’re Chief’s Watch,’ Ko had said, and the irony of using the war chief’s secret police as a disguise to stop them was clearly delicious to the small Duergar. The Chief’s Watch were apparently figures to be feared, even by this warlike people, and as they stood by the shadows of a Gabor-stall, they were left alone by the other Duergar and pointedly avoided.
There was no disguising the captain and Irie’s limited stature in comparison to the others however, and instead, the two humans had been dressed in simple robes of dirty linen and wore large collars around their necks, which they had been told, the captain grimaced slightly, were actually the collars of some of the dissidents who had been thralls, before they were freed.
‘You will look like our servants, and we’re taking you for questioning.’ Ko had seemed apologetic at the imposition, but the greener-scaled Erkig had only cheerfully grinned as he had locked them in place. It was obvious that Erkig was still no lover of humans, but the captain and Irie’s bravery and their skill at shooting down the war chief’s attack craft had at least earned them some respect.
It was nearing midday, and the sun was high and the market street busy. Somewhere nearby there was a loud argument, and the captain watched nervously as two Duergar proceeded to roughhouse and brawl right there, in the center of the market street. No one seemed to think that this was out of the ordinary or cause for alarm, so he did his best to ignore the heavy impacts of fists on pebble-scales. On the other side of the street, at other stalls and the heads of smaller, winding streets, the captain could see other similarly disguised dissidents, waiting for their cue. At the end of the street stood a trio, with their thrall, Irie.
“Are you sure?” he mouthed the words at her, not knowing if she would make them out across the distance and noise, but in return, he received a quick nod, and then the three left the street and disappeared into the press of Duergar, heading for Duric’s only spaceport.
“Then the stars go with you,” Eliard murmured under his breath, turning back to his two companions. He hadn’t liked Irie’s idea of separating, intending to complete the second half of their mission, but he could agree that it was necessary, and he hardly had the technical know-how that she did.
No, he thought, looking down at the bulky shape of the Device under his robes. Even with his injuries, and his fatigue, he had other skills that were needed right now.
“Ready?” Erkig grumbled. He was clearly not the patient sort.
The captain cast one more look at the space where Irie and her co-conspirators had vanished, then nodded. “Yes,” he said, feeling a twinge of worry. I wanted to not endanger any of my crew again, and now look. I have lost two, and the third is on some insane suicide mission. The only scant comfort was the fact that his own suicide mission was far more dangerous.
But they’re my crew, he thought, and nodded. “Ready,” he said, and Erkig led the way, breaking ranks to march through the market street as he was the biggest—therefore clearly their superior in Duergar terms—with Eliard, Ko, and several other dissidents behind him. And they were marching straight to the walls of the arena.
In the dark recesses of the caverns and cells underneath Duric’s famous arena, Val Pathok was trying to break the chains that bound him, but even he was having little success. The links were forged of large iron to manacles at his wrists and ankles and then attached to a solid hoop embedded in the rock floor.
The cell that he had woken up to was little more than a bare cavern hewn out of the rock. Even if he didn’t recognize this particular cavern, he knew where he was. His time here as a child had often seen him trailing his father’s footsteps as he dispensed his own particular form of ‘justice’ to his people.
Today, it seemed that such recollections weren’t very far from anyone’s mind, as the only other figure in the cavern cleared his throat. “To think that I had such high hopes for you,” said Val’s father, the War Chief Pathok Ma. The Duergar was dressed in light robes that did nothing to mask the fact that he was a large Duergar, and his limbs still held power in them as he raised one clawed hand—missing two of its fingers from some distant war—and picked at one of his broken tusks, deep in thought.
“I didn’t expect you to give in so easily to nostalgia,” Val grunted. His head rang like a bell, and his body felt electric and achy with the jag of whatever it was that they had tried to poison him with.
“Hadoo Root.” His father saw his son’s mysticism. “I’m sure you remember it?”
“I never took that trash, as well you know,” Val sneered back.
His father, confidently superior in his position, merely looked down at his son with a fair degree of pity. “Trash? How far you have fallen, my son. You know, as we all do, that Hadoo Root has been used by warring Duergar ever since we began.”
“Ever since the Valyien got us hooked on it, you mean,” Val said, once again pulling on his restraints. When he found them unmoving, he growled his frustration.
“You have spent too long away from Dur, my son,” his father said lightly. “You have forgotten everything about our past. Yes, the Valyien were our masters. Yes, we were no better than thralls. But it was their oppression which taught us how to fight.” His father grinned, his shovel-like maw full of tusks. “I have been thinking a lot about what that little man said in my hall.”
Val frowned for a moment. “Oh. The captain.”
“Captain.” His father shook his great head. “You serve a human? You. The Hero of the Chenga Pass!”
“I do not serve,” Val grumbled, feeling his chest start to expand with rage. “We don’t serve like slaves and thralls. That is what makes us different.”
“Enough!” his father bellowed. “You are my thrall, and you will listen.” He turned and walked to one end of the tunnel opening and back, the talons on his scaled feet making clicking noises as he paced. “You may think me backward, a fool, but I have my informants. My ways of getting information. I reached out to see if there was anything that this little ‘captain’ of yours told me was true.”
Val looked at his father. This was unlike him. He had never known him to be circumspect when he could be brash. “And what did you find?”
“That there is a new creature in the galaxy.” His father’s eyes narrowed. “A type of cruiser they call the Alpha-Vessel, and it was born of bastard Armcore and ancient Valyien technology.”
“I could have told you that, Father,” Val said. “So you believe us?”
“I never said that I disbelieved you, son, only that you were misguided, and weak.” His father’s tone was deadly. “This Alpha-vessel has already managed to partially cripple the Imperial Coalition by stealing the Helion Generator and killing the planet Haversham.”
“What?” Val wasn’t shocked, because he didn’t get shocked, but this news did change things. The war was on, and it had escalated quickly. Killing a planet, he echoed. That was a serious act indeed, and one that was very rare in the history of interstellar conflict, and that wasn’t only because of the Imperial Coalition unifying all of the principle antagonists. As a fighting Duergar, and primed for the ways of war, he knew that it just didn’t make sense. What thralls could you capture if you destroyed the planet? What looting could you perform? What lamentations of your enemies would ring down through history if you just wiped them from the face of the galaxy?
“And what is even more hilarious is that no Armcore or Imperial vessel has even been able to slow it down, from all accounts,” the chief continued, with not a small amount of glee.
“You sound as though you are pleased,” Val said in disgust. “Now I think it is you who has forgotten our history, Father.”
“How dare you!” It had the effect that he wanted, and his father rushed at him, lashing out with a clawed hand to grab his son’s wrist and haul him to his feet, presumably to beat him.
But Val tensed every muscle he had in his back and pulled back on his arm, and, for a moment, the two large Duergar were locked in stalemate as neither of them could move the other. Pain roared through Val’s shoulder, but he wouldn’t give his father the satisfaction of being stronger than he was. He wasn’t, Val knew that.
“Pfagh!” The War Chief Pathok Ma threw his arm back at him and moved away, panting heavily from the exertion. It was a small victory, Val knew, but it was still sweet.
“You may think that you are being clever, Val, son of Pathok, but you are not. You are being stupid. You think that you are being honorable, that somehow you are embodying the true Duergar way, but of that, you are deeply mistaken.” His father lashed his son with his words where his strength wouldn’t suffice. “I know what we Duergar are. We are predators. We were predators. King lizards in a bygone age, before we were raised by the Valyien to sentience—”
“—to be used as their pets!” Val burst out. Where was his father going with this? What heinous thing was he about to say?
“Do you know what a true king predator does when they encounter another opponent? A much stronger one?” His father’s one good eye flashed in fear.
“We challenge them,” Val growled in anger.
“We stay the hell out of the way,” his father snapped back. “And we learn to grow strong. We follow them, we benefit from their kills, we wait until the bigger opponent isn’t looking, and then…” His father chomped down with his jaws in a loud smacking motion.
“You are insane if you think that you can beat the Alpha-vessel on your own,” Val said. His father was mad. That was the only reason for it.
“Of course, I do not believe that. What do you take me for, a complete fool?” His father chuckled. “This Alpha is part Valyien. Some part of its code or memory banks remembers the Duergar. It remembers that we were the best fighters that they ever had. We cleared worlds for the Valyien. We defeated civilizations. We took more thralls then than we ever have since.”
“At what price!” Val shook his chains, but still they would not budge.
“I’m glad you understand, son,” his father confused him by saying. “The price was our freedom, but the gift was that we became strong. Truly strong.” The war chief lifted his eyes to look out at the cavern walls, although Val knew that he wasn’t looking at the bare stone, still marked with strange stains of past tortures. “I intend to meet with this Alpha that has you quaking in your boots—”
Another furious chain rattle from his son at the insult.
“And when Alpha destroys the Imperial Coalition and burns out Armcore for the virus that it is, the mighty warriors of Dur will strike. We will destroy Alpha, and we will have a sea of worlds open for us to conquer!”
“You’re a fool, old man,” Val snarled, trying to rise but only resulting in more pain from the restraints, “if you think that Alpha won’t see through your plan in seconds. It has probably already figured out everything that you could want and is already seeking to counter it.”
“Indeed, maybe you are right.” His father, despite the warnings, appeared relaxed and confident. “Because I came to tell you that just a few hours ago, a warp-capacity drone entered this system, of a type that none of our sensors could identify, and it is heading toward Dur. It is broadcasting a message saying that it is an emissary of Alpha, and that it wishes to talk.”
“You cannot meet with it! Destroy it, now! You must, Father, if you value your people…” Val burst out. “What if its message is a ruse, and it came to do to Dur what it did to Haversham?”
“Oh, I am more than fully aware of what it did to Haversham, and so I intend to treaty with it. I intend to offer Alpha this captain of yours, and perhaps even our help in defeating the Imperial Coalition. What would be a better gift then that?” his father said. “And when Alpha believes that we are allies, that is when we shall strike…”
