Valyien Box Set 2, page 20
part #4 of Valyien Series
They were large, for their kind, and even though they had alien forms, Eliard could still recognize the statures of trained warriors. They wore rough canvas robes like a monk’s, rough and heavy so that they obscured their bodies—apart from their fists—and with hoods high over their shovel-like heads. Only the glint of starlight on their cracked tusks and in their predatory eyes remained.
“Just like a human,” one of the thugs growled. “Weak. You beg when you could fight.” There was the hum of charge, and from the folds of his robes, he produced a Duergar energy weapon, looking like a short spear but which crackled with white and blue energy. In response, Eliard flicked his forearm, and the Device rippled and shook, its blue-scale sheaths changing and arranging to form into the devastating gun.
“You really wanna dance with us?” Eliard pointed the weapon straight at the lead Duergar. He figured that they must have seen the effect it’d had in the arena. They must have known that it was more powerful than their energy blades.
“Gah!” The lead Duergar snapped his wrist as he dove to one side, his robes flaring behind him as the energy weapon shot out its accumulated energy straight at the captain.
THOOM! Eliard fired as he too jumped to one side. As well as having the Device to his advantage, he also prided himself that he was a pretty good sharpshooter. Still, he only managed to score a grunt of pain from his moving opponent as it winged him across the shoulder.
“Hyah!” Irie jumped and rolled as another of the energy weapons fired at her, but she rolled toward one of the three Duergar, popping up with her good hand striking out to connect with the creature’s instep. There was a grunt of pain as the Duergar fell and rolled, and Irie was bouncing up to her feet once again and reaching for his energy weapon—
FZT! The first Duergar, the speaker, fired from his crouch at Eliard, burning the dirt and narrowly missing him as the captain spun, raised the Device, and—
“Ach!” Fire burned across his shoulder as the third of the Duergar combatants shot the captain. A glancing blow perhaps, but still enough to send him rolling head over heels. He felt the Armcore encounter suit react, hardening its fibers to form a protective shell over the blast on his shoulder, but he still felt raw and scalded underneath.
What was worse, the blow had given his prime attacker time to leap toward him, landing a kick across Eliard’s chest. Once again, the suit reacted to harden under the impact, so instead of breaking ribs, it merely bruised them as Eliard hit the dirt again.
There are too many of them. They’re too big— his battered mind had a moment to think, before he reached up to bat the descending energy blade out of the way and try to get a decent angle with the Device. There were none, as the two Duergar had closed around him and resorted to their brute strength to wrestle his dangerous weapon out of their way.
“Captain!” Just a little way away, Irie was having about the same luck as she fought just one of the Duergar, with only her fists and feet. The mechanic was not trained the same way that the captain had been, and neither of them had the elite martial training of either Val Pathok or Cassandra Mila, but Irie was determined not to die. She punched her opponent strongly across the face and heard the satisfying crack as one of his tusks dislodged inside the great jaw.
But such things were commonplace for a Duergar, and in return, the robed oaf merely headbutted the smaller woman with the great pebble-scale dome of their head.
“Agh!” She fell back, blinking and staggering, and the Duergar she was fighting rose with a triumphant grin.
But where Irie might not be as mighty or as fast as others, she made up for with sheer grit. In her hands, she held the stolen energy-blade weapon of the Duergar, dropped in the fight, and she squeezed the trigger handle as the Duergar’s small eyes widened.
FZT! The shot was point blank, burning through the Duergar’s robes and sending the large form flying backwards. Irie turned around hurriedly to try and help the captain, only to see that she was already too late. Someone else had gotten there first.
The captain was struggling to his feet, and around him were the two bodies of his attackers. One with a smoking chest, and the other with a large blade sticking out of his back.
“Captain, did you do that?” Irie hissed quickly.
“No, he did.” Eliard nodded to the new arrival, a smaller Duergar dressed in rugged leathers and a coarse battle harness, holding a heavy laser rifle in his hands.
“Come on, no time,” this new Duergar said to them, and Eliard thought that he might be younger than many they had seen so far. His scales were not to pronounced or as heavy as the others, and his eyes were a shocking pale green, like the first flush of new growth in spring. “I’m a friend. We have to get you two out of here,” their savior said, beckoning them to follow as he ran into the night.
“Who are you?” Eliard breathed, his chest burning from the effort, and not just the running but the pummeling that he had taken from the others.
“Never mind who I am, you should be asking who they were,” the younger Duergar said. He still only had the nubs of horns along his forehead, and his tusks were not the large tiger-like teeth of the larger Duergar, but were still rounded, and only barely showed past scaled lips.
But the most obvious difference between this Duergar and any of the others that they had fought was the fact that he wore clothes that did not seem to declare him to be a warrior, or one of Pathok Ma’s chosen. His battle-harness was clearly home-made—an X of leather straps wound and padded over the shoulders and at the hips, cinched tight with buckles and ties. His breeches were also made of a durable, dark material and were covered in utility pockets.
And then there was the fact that he didn’t seem to have half as many weapons as most Duergar I’ve seen. The captain noted only a simple belt knife, a good one for skinning or spearing meat or cutting cord, not an enemy’s throat, and of course the heavy rifle. All the other Duergar that either Eliard or Irie had seen were only too happy to proudly display their energy blades, lances, swords, axes, and a variety of blasters about their person.
“Those that attacked you? They’re called the Chief’s Watch,” their companion said, his broad chest rising and falling like a bellows as he peered around the corner of a stone building and down a slowly descending cobbled street. They could all hear the sounds of shouts and the occasional harsh laughter, but that didn’t seem to bother their guide. Maybe the sound of violence is normal for a Duergar city, the captain thought.
“They’re another reason why the war chief must fall,” their guide said heavily, and as he did so, the captain saw him touch his neck, where there hung from a string what looked to be exactly like a Duergar tooth, the captain saw with a little distaste.
“So, I figure that you’re not a fan of War Chief Pathok Ma?” he said as he caught his breath.
“No. And I’m not the only one, either. There are a lot of us who think that he’s lost sight of the old ways.” Their guide nodded and took off across the moonlit cobbles as Eliard and Irie followed him to the next darkened alley. Then they stopped and paused once again.
“You know Val?” Irie asked the questions this time, as Eliard was still limping and hissing in pain from his earlier injury.
“No. But my father Herg Lah did. He fought beside him at the Chenga Pass,” the young Duergar said, casting a wary look at his followers. “There are many who think that your gunner is a hero.”
“Really? That’s not quite the impression that we got at the War Chief’s Hall…” Eliard muttered.
“No, you wouldn’t. The chief has packed it full of warriors as bloodthirsty as he is,” the guide said.
“But I thought that you Duergar, if you excuse me…” the captain said, before the dark look from their guide instantly shut him up.
“Not all,” he said heavily. “There are some of us who want to honor the old ways, but who also want to join the Imperial Coalition of home worlds. We Duergar have been treated as little more than savages by everyone, and before that, we were slaves to the Valyien,” he said, his vivid green eyes shining with passionate intensity. “And war chiefs like Pathok Ma only help spread that illusion, that we’re brutes. That we can’t think, engineer, negotiate, trade.”
The captain was fairly stunned by this turn of events. He had to think that even after all of the years of flying with Val, he had been one of the people to think that about the Durish people. What an idiot I have been, he thought, and not for the first time, and not only about this. He had known Val to pilot the Mercury, as well as to step in to help with repairs. Perhaps he’s not great at the negotiation bit though, remembering the many occasions when Val successfully closed a pirate deal with a heavy fist to the face of their opposite negotiators. But it got the job done, he had to admit.
“Pathok Ma is a curse to the honor of the Durish people,” the guide continued. “Val was right when he said that he shouldn’t have slaughtered all the hearth-steaders of that uprising. Now, half of Dur either hates Pathok Ma or is terrified of him. Which is kind of the same thing, if you think about it.”
Eliard was shocked at that surprisingly astute bit of psychology, coming from the form of a creature that was far wider than him, and covered in scales. But appearances can be deceptive, he regarded the sheathed and scaled Device on his own arm, as the guide concluded.
“Dur will be at war for a hundred years or more if we don’t find a way to stop War Chief Ma. And while that is not something that frightens me, and I know that any Duergar will be happy for the fight, I would rather our people advance as we could, and not be put back a generation with another senseless war.”
“Wise words,” Eliard muttered. Especially, he thought, given what he knew was coming. Alpha.
“Come on, we’re almost there.” The guide ran across the street to the next alley, followed it at what was, for Eliard, a punishing pace to where it ended in a wide and abandoned street under a tall stone wall. This part of Duric appeared to be abandoned or misused, as the walls were covered with the heavy, fleshy vines, and partially hidden from view was an old, black-iron gate. It took their guide just a few moments to break the old bars from the rotted mortar at their base, and they were into the wilds that surrounded the city.
“Where are you taking us?” Irie asked.
“And who are you, anyway?” Eliard said. Their guide had still set a punishing pace, and the captain had never been very good at handling pain.
The trio had joined with what appeared to be no better than a track through the jungle. In many places, their way was partially obscured by the fleshy fronds of more of the spiky trees or spreading vines. The ground underfoot was damp and thick with humus, and every twig or stone they tripped over revealed strange millipedes and bugs the like of which neither the captain nor Irie had ever seen before.
“Ko Herg,” the guide called back. He had seemed to relax a little now that he was out of the city of his enemy, and he took a moment to sniff at the air around them, before choosing a new direction through the brush.
“You know we left our ship back there…” Eliard said with a grunt of pain. He hoped that he didn’t catch anything from this jungle. He’d heard that they harbored all sorts of strange viruses, and the thought of a virus that affected Duergar eating him was just too frightening to think about.
“Your ship will be impounded,” Ko said matter-of-factly.
“What!? Then we have to go back!” the captain said, his pain forgotten. This was his ship. His ship.
“Calm down, human.” Ko Herg rolled his eyes. “They won’t do anything to it, not yet. But I bet you that there will be some reason as to why it’s currently surrounded by more of the chief’s guards.”
“We did alright against that last lot of, what did you call them, the Chief’s Watch?”
“It won’t be them. The Chief’s Watch are like the underground enforcers of the war chief’s will. Even Pathok Ma has to pretend to be honorable, so it’s an open secret that he uses his watch for everything else. Note how they didn’t have any flags or insignia on them?” Ko Herg reached up to scramble up the nearest incline. “Besides, we’re almost at the camp.”
“The camp?” Irie said.
“Yeah.” Their guide extended a large clawed hand to help Irie up the embankment. “I told you that there were more of us who didn’t agree with the war chief, didn’t I?”
The captain and Irie saw that he wasn’t joking. After scrambling up the incline and into a dense bit of the jungle, their path opened out to a wide clearing on top of this shelf of jungle, where there appeared to be an encampment capable of housing at least a few hundred Duergar.
“We’ll get the healer to look at your leg and get you a place to rest, but don’t expect much, I’m afraid.” Ko Herg nodded to the small tents and huts made out of old canvas or jungle-wood. Small campfires were scattered here and there throughout the encampment, around which sat the guards or those who couldn’t sleep.
Eliard thought back to the capital city of Duric—the gun emplacements, the squadrons of the war chief’s guards in full encounter armor patrolling the city. When he looked back at the couple of a hundred people here, male, female, young and old, he wondered if he might not have a better chance of rescuing Val alone.
8
The Greater Enemy
“Captain, wake up!” Irie hissed to him, and Eliard wondered just how many times in his recent service to Ponos he had been woken by some terrible news by his chief engineer. Too many.
“Urgh,” he groaned. Everything hurt, his body felt stiff and achy, and he wondered when this torment was going to end.
When I get Val back. When I stop Valyien. When I pay Armcore back for helping to kill Cassandra. The captain might have a melodramatic soul, but he was a fast learner, and he pushed himself up from the jungle floor and the thin blanket that had been his bed. The first thing he saw was his bandaged leg. The medical supplies of the dissidents they were staying with had run out seasons ago, according to the old Durish woman who had worked on his injured leg last night. That meant that instead of pristine flesh made new by a genetic spray, or the white, sterile, medikit field dressings that he knew were stocked inside the Mercury Blade, he was looking at a leg wrapped in long jungle leaves and secured with corn, over a foul-smelling unction.
Dear stars, he groaned. “I bet there’s no coffee, either.”
“They’ve got Gabor?” Irie held up a wooden bowl that looked as though it had been shaped out of a very large seed. “It’s quite alright actually, when you get used to it. And eat it in small bites.”
“No thanks.” Eliard almost retched, looking around for his boots. They sat on the dark soil of the forest floor, beside a fire ringed with stones that had long since given itself over to coals. Near them were little huts made out of halved tree trunks, or stretches of canvas that appeared repurposed from industry, still with large glyphs and numbers stamped onto their sides. It was daytime, and the air hummed and buzzed with the sound of insects and distant shrieks of wildlife.
“Where is everyone?” Eliard yawned, scratching at his stubble. All that he could see was the occasional Duergar going about their camp tasks, or the resounding cracks as Duergar children played the game that seemed to give them endless delight, ‘headbutt.’
“It’s almost midday, and Ko Herg and the others are having some kind of meeting.” Irie looked serious. “I listened in and it seems that Ko wants to break Val out of the war chief’s prison.”
“That sounds good to me. What’s the problem?” Eliard yawned again and stretched.
“The others don’t think that they’re ready.” Irie looked around at their camp. Hardly a bit of technology anywhere in sight, the captain saw, and knew that they would be going up against an opponent with all sorts of tanks, drones, and military hardware. “And I think that they might be right,” Irie said heavily.
Eliard swore. “Why don’t they just tell us where they’ve got him held captive? I’m sure…”
“Captain. Even with that thing on your arm, it looked as though the Duergar were soundly beating the living hell out of you,” his mechanic said seriously, and the captain knew that she was right. He looked down at the Device. What is wrong with it, he thought. Ponos had told him that it would shift to meet any challenge.
“Still,” the captain settled for saying. “I’m not leaving Val to rot in some dungeon.”
“No,” Irie said, just as adamantly. “We just need to figure out some way to get the dissidents to win.”
Eliard paused, looking at the dirt underneath him as his mind raced. He was just Eliard Martin, and even with the Device, he was still just one man, an injured one. He was no Duergar. He couldn’t fight off armies single-handedly. He had no other weapons, and he wasn’t able to get to the Mercury. Looking at Irie, he calculated as best as he was able. She was an excellent engineer. If she could get her hands on pretty much anything, then she might be able to rig something that would help them. But against a city?
I need to get Val back! He kicked at the dirt, felt pain shoot through his leg, and shouted. Idiot. It wasn’t just the fact that he needed Val to help him on the Mercury Blade, they were friends.
And I have lost too many of those already. He thought of the House Archival Agent, Cassandra Milan. He was supposed to have been her captain. If anyone was supposed to die for the sake of the mission, then it should have been him.
And now it looks like I am just down to one crew member left, he thought. Just how bad of a captain am I?
And that was when he had an idea. And luckily, he still had the means to carry out his plan in the form of the wrist computer. “Please work,” he muttered, tapping its screen to get at the holographic keypad, and there to slide through the menu options until he found the exact glyph he was looking for. A small red triangle with the dot of an eye in its center.
“Ponos, I need your help.” He tapped the symbol, hoping that the Armcore machine intelligence hadn’t been exaggerating when it had said that it had updated all of their hardware.
