The Empress

Four

Upon finally entering the sanctuary the skalds had arranged for themselves aboard Gladius, Garth left behind the terror of the alien monsters-but he felt far from safe. These people were controlled by the Tulk, a race of aliens that were as erudite as the Skaintz were visceral. But they were still strange and dangerous.

Tulk riders lived inside the skulls of their hosts. Parasitic beings, they rarely dealt with the outside world, and one of their greatest fears was that of being exposed to that exterior environment. Physically, they were little more than a pound or so of spiny jelly, but they were quite capable of invading a host and dominating it at will. They did not ‘take the reins’ of their mounts often, preferring to live a dreaming life inside the skull of the host, contemplating deep philosophical concepts. Occasionally, however, events took a grim turn and they were forced to dominate their host in order to ensure their survival and avoid the risk of exposure.

Having two minds riding in one skull, one human and one alien made skalds behave oddly from the point of view of observing humans. The alien Tulk, even though they were generally quiescent, affected the nervous system of their hosts. To Garth, who’d once been a skald himself, the behavior of these human-alien hybrids was predictable and rational-but sinister.

“What has become of your rider, rogue?” a skald asked him. She was a pretty waif, with slack features, pale skin and soft, padding feet.

“I’m not sure,” Garth answered.

He was decidedly nervous among the skalds, who’d once sought to kill him. He licked his lips continuously as he followed the skald girl into the central saloon of the VIP lounge. There, a central seating arrangement allowed a group of skalds to sit in a ring, holding hands. They appeared unconscious, but he knew they were aware. Their riders were communing. It seemed odd to have such a large group conferring at once. Tulk usually preferred wandering isolation, with rare moments of contact. Garth knew that they must be discussing the enemy aboard the ship.

“Your answer is unsatisfactory,” one of the communing skalds said, speaking from the couch. This one was a male, and taller than most. He had a large head-the skull was fringed in white hair and almost bulbous in shape. As he spoke, he did not look up, but let his head loll to one side as if sleeping.

Garth licked his lips again. “I’m sorry, but they took Fryx from me. I-”

“Who do you refer to with a vague pronoun, rogue?”

“Excuse me?”

“Who is: they?”

“Ah, well, Lucas Droad and his crew. They took Fryx and imprisoned him on Neu Schweitz. I don’t know what has become of him since that time.”

The skald on the couch lifted his hand toward the female who’d allowed Garth to enter their sanctuary. His skinny arm extended toward her unerringly, despite the fact his eyes remained closed and his head continued to droop. Wordlessly, the girl approached and took his hand. She looked at Garth with a new sharpness in her expression. Her eyes had become piercing and judgmental.

“He will do,” the old skald on the couch said.

Garth understood that the old Tulk had borrowed the vision of the younger, and it was he who looked out of her pale, blue, wet eyes now.

“Will do for what?” Garth asked. “I’ve come to help you. I know where the enemy is. The infection is still light, and early in its discovery. Perhaps they can be excised. I can help in this matter. The crew can join with the skalds and save the lives of all.”

After this brief speech, during which Garth found his words tumbling out of his mouth and seemingly blurring over one another, the attitude of the girl shifted. She smirked lightly, then made an odd, barking sound. Garth realized she was laughing at him.

“You are a fool, even for a rogue,” she said. “There will be no cooperation.”

“Why not? We are all trapped on this ship. We die or survive as one.”

“If we join the riderless human cattle in their struggle with the Skaintz, we will perish.”

“You will perish in any regard, if the enemy is not defeated.”

“This enemy can’t be defeated. They can only be avoided.”

“Nonsense. I’ve read the archeological texts. The Tulk once fought the Skaintz. Your people beat them once-in this very section of space.”

For the very first time, the Tulk controlling the girl’s speech paused, and appeared troubled. Garth knew that in and of itself was a triumph. He pressed ahead.

“You can hide in here, but they will find a way in eventually. You don’t have a separate propulsion system, placing you at their mercy. If they tire of you, they can steer this vessel into the furnace of a nearby star. You must fight at some point.”

“We have held council, discussing these things. It is possible the unspeakable events you prophesize will come to pass. But for now, we will remain quiet and hidden. Let the wild humans flail against them. With luck, they will succeed and drive them from the ship. If they do not, we have our walls. If those fail, we will act because we will be forced to act.”

Garth sighed. The mindset of the Tulk had not changed much since he was one with them. They seemed to have little of the fire left that had caused them to stand up to the Skaintz in the past.

“Why then,” he asked delicately, “did you allow me to enter your sanctuary?”

“We have need of you. My mount is ailing. I need a new one.”

Horror swept through Garth, and he reacted with physical revulsion at the thought. The pain alone would be bad enough, but the process of the mounting-he could not imagine going through it again. The Tulk would be an old one, meaning it had bulk. It would not fit easily, sliding through his nasal orifice and digging its way into his skull. Commonly, the Tulk made decisions about what sections of brain tissue were extraneous and carefully excised them as bloody waste when they found themselves in a tight fit. Once inside, they dug in their spines and took command of their new hosts, tapping blood vessels to feed and nerve endings to exert control.

Before coming here, Garth had considered the possibility of ill-treatment on the part of his hosts. He had a blade in his belt, and he withdrew it now. He held it up so it gleamed in the light of the jeweled chandeliers that hung over the couches.

“I will not allow any Tulk to mount me again,” he said.

None of the skalds moved, but Garth sensed a change in their demeanor. They often seemed to be dreamy and aloof, but the threat of physical, bodily harm coming to their mounts always got their attention.

“You would threaten your masters with violence?” the skald girl asked. Her face registered dull shock.

“You have threatened me.”

“We’ve offered you a rider, a chance to rise again from the herds of filthy, wild humans into the ranks of the skalds. Such an elevation of status should be met with tears of joy. This is an especially rare honor since you are a rogue, who would normally be put down.”

“I thank you for your consideration, but I must refuse.”

“I am Ornth, the greatest of the Tulk in this region of space. Unfortunately, I’m riding a dying mount. I must have a new mount in order to persist. It is inconceivable you would deny me this request.”

Garth shrugged with casual disinterest. “You should consider sharing another skull among your party. If they will not have you, perhaps they will feed you tidbits while you float in a tank of liquid. Fryx did exactly that for years while in space, and the experience caused him no permanent harm.”

“Your suggestions are insulting.”

“Let me clarify the situation, then,” Garth said, brandishing his long workman’s blade under the small nose of the skald girl. “No pain will be visited upon your bodies. Nor will any of you be exposed-if you leave me alone.”

They fell quiet again for several seconds. Garth knew they were conferring between themselves. They were not a telepathic race-that was a common misconception concerning the mysterious Tulk. They communicated with their hosts via interrupted nerve endings, and controlled muscles and thoughts in precisely the fashion a human’s mind might send an electrochemical pulse through a nerve strand to cause a finger to twitch. Amongst a collection of skalds such as these, they used a code of varied, almost imperceptible taps and pressures applied to the hands of one by the fingers of another. When touching bodies, from one skald to another, they formed a network of sorts and relayed concepts from one to the next silently and efficiently.

“Your lack of civility and ingratitude at being admitted into this sanctuary is disgusting. However, we have need of occasional systems repairs. Can you effect these adjustments for us?”

Garth considered. He’d lost his work cart and most of his tools, but he had been trained in basic maintenance. Further, he was certain a toolkit would be stashed somewhere in the large VIP suites.

“I can perform such duties, and I will do so willingly.”

“Very well, you may stay among us until such a time as we deem your presence unwarranted.”

Garth accepted this statement without comment. Privately, he calculated the odds that the skalds would be able to eject him from this place without injury to themselves were extremely low.

Garth found there were more than a few failing systems in the suites where the skalds had taken refuge. The first such system he worked on was the security network feed. There were a fair number of monitors recessed in the walls of the various saloons and lounges, but none of them could connect to the outside world of the larger ship. He spent a full day working on the security network before he managed to get it working. In the end, it turned out to be a simple burned-out coupling. This was a relief, as he’d half-expected to find an enemy shrade in the works, chewing on the cables or infecting their subsystems with viruses.

When he managed to tap into the outside feed, he looked at the screens with interest. He flicked from one input camera to the next, but things looked pretty dull out there. Every corridor was empty. Every auxiliary hold was quiet and tranquil.

Garth thought of the bridge, but the cameras there didn’t operate. He licked his lips again. Nervousness had returned. After a day of hard work, he felt a familiar tickle of fear. He checked the cameras in the main hold, and saw nothing. This proved little, as the hold was miles long and held such a vast array of goods it was hard to say what was happening inside. One might as well look at a forest while cruising above it on a skimmer and declare it lifeless.

After a moment of hesitation, he switched channels and directed the monitors to feed him the vid from the lifepods. In all honesty, he’d expected to get nothing but static air, as he had when viewing the bridge. What he found instead was exhilarating.

The crewmen were there. Dozens of them. Security people in red, maintenance in green, flight crew in royal blue. Among them were others-they could only be passengers who’d been awakened. All in all, it was a veritable army. They were well-armed, too. They carried everything from beam weapons to fire axes. No one seemed unarmed.

Garth took on a predatory-almost prideful-expression. Here were his people, marching on the enemy. They’d followed up on his warning. They’d gathered their strength, and even now they were moving in for the kill. They’d repelled these invaders once before, and although the infection had returned, they were more than ready and capable of vanquishing it again. They had done so on Garm, Neu Schweitz and this very ship in the past.

Garth reached up and switched the feed to broadcast. Every monitor in the skald suites blazed into life in response, and began relaying the vids as he watched them. Let these cowardly Tulk know what humans were capable of! Activating the loudspeaker, he keyed open the microphone and spoke into it, his breath gusting loudly in the speakers as he made an announcement.

“I am Garth, a former skald. I have repaired your video feed from the ship. I’ve discovered something interesting while testing the system. A battle is about to be joined.”

He sat back, crossed his arms and smiled at the screen. It was time to enjoy the show.

The crewmen advanced to the pods of lifeboats, creeping quietly. Garth recognized the Captain among them. They paused at the bulkheads, massing up for the final assault. A number of them carried flamethrowers. These were signaled forward. The nozzles of their weapons dribbled molten orange plasmas.

A signal was given-Garth could not hear it, as the sound was still disabled. He adjusted and readjusted the controls, vainly. This would be far better with sound.

The six entrances to the lifeboat pods on the starboard side of Gladius snapped open at once. The crewmen with flamethrowers trotted forward and let loose with flares of brilliant flame. Garth cheered appreciatively, and realized why there was no sound. He’d never turned the volume up on the video input. A moment later, sound boomed from every monitor. The skalds could scarcely ignore the battle now!

Events moved rapidly. After hosing the lifeboats with cleansing flame, the crewmen began to advance into the compartments. Garth watched tensely.

The first hint that something was amiss came from off-camera. An odd, keening sound arose. The crewmen onscreen seemed scarcely aware of it initially, but the cries were quickly joined by a dozen similar outbursts.

Next, a blaze of automatic weapons fire erupted-not in the lifeboat compartments, but out amongst the stacked cargo containers in the hold.

Garth fought the controls, finally managing to alter the angle of the camera so he could see what the fuss was about. A female crewman ran into view, clutching her helmet tightly to her head. Was she wearing a tail of some kind? No, it had to be something else. Squinting and zooming in, Garth realized she wasn’t wearing a helmet at all. There was something-something on her head. He realized with a cold shiver that it was a shrade. The enemy creatures were dropping them among the crew.

Matters became uncertain after that. More and more crewmen, people who’d been at the rear ranks with the least effective armament, rushed forward and often fell flopping onto the deck. Some were shot by their nervous comrades. More than one was burned like a flopping, staggering creature from a holovid by the overzealous members of the flamethrower squads when they came too close for comfort.

“They’re behind us, out in the hold! Forget the lifepods! Turn and take cover,” the Captain ordered. His was a booming voice, full of confidence.

The group did so, but the assaults stopped. Uncertain, the group hugged hexagonal cargo cases and peered in every direction at once.

Gunfire then rose up in a wild booming fusilade. Garth worked the camera controls, eyes bulging and looking everywhere at once. Who was firing? Every crewman he saw seemed to be ducking and cowering behind equipment.

Then they sprinted forward. A company of killbeasts. They fired as they advanced. Crewmen who dared to fire back were quickly cut down by more accurate fire, but they did managed to stop a number of the enemy. When the killbeast charge finally reached the crew’s ragged line, they set about slaughtering everyone they came in contact with, shooting them at point-blank range or kicking out with their bladed feet to maim and decapitate. More flamethrowers blazed, burning down screaming crewmen as often as silent, impossibly vital killbeasts.

In less than a minute, the charge had been broken. There were just too many crewmen, they outnumbered the aliens at least three to one. These humans had met with the aliens before, and were not as likely to panic as they might have been in the past. They knew the score: this was do or die. There was little hope that one could run away, so they did not bother. They fought until every killbeast lay still on the deck or was left draped over the cargo containers.

A ragged cheer went up from their ranks, a cry that was echoed by Garth himself. Spittle flew from his lips, but he paid no heed. He wished for a drink, and lamented that none was to be found here in the maintenance cabinets.

“See?” he shouted into the microphone. “We’ve won! We’ve beaten them back. Do you not feel like sick cowards now, Tulk?”

There was no reply from the saloons and lounges. This didn’t trouble Garth. He knew they had seen the spectacle. He hoped they knew shame, but he doubted Tulk were capable of that emotion. Rather than finding brave beings to be inspirational, they considered them to be rank fools, individuals to be despised and marveled at for their credulity.

Something shook the camera then. There was a booming report from inside the hold. Garth panned the viewpoint around again, but could not quite see-

The crewmen were standing, firing-some broke and fled. Towering figures strode into their midst, heedless of bullets, beams, or gushes of sticky orange flame from the surviving flamethrowers. Garth knew what they were, and he could scarcely believe his eyes.

“Juggers?” he asked the monitor in a hushed voice. “How could they have bred them so quickly?”

There were only four of them, but that was enough. The humans had stood up to opponents of their own size, but these monsters were too much. They seemingly could not be brought down by conventional ballistic weaponry. Each absorbed hundreds of rounds, but still kept striding among the humans who harassed it, plucking off limbs and skulls, then vomiting gore after they’d consumed too much. The problem was the crewmen lacked guns powerful enough to puncture these yard-thick monsters deeply and disrupt the vital organs.

The juggers represented the final stage of the battle. The humans broke under their weight, and were run down by thunder-footed monsters. Their tails lashed and their jaws worked as they masticated excitedly. It was a feeding frenzy, and the juggers kept at it for a long time, hunting down each human that hid among the cargo crates and devouring them. Only one of the juggers was brought down, and that one still flopped and thrashed on the deck, trying to rise despite what had to be a dozen fatal wounds.

Garth leaned forward, resting one wiry arm atop the monitor. He wanted to vomit, pass out, or commit suicide. He did none of these things. Instead, he shivered and panted with fear and despair. It was now only a matter of time until these things penetrated the skald bastion.

A figure cast a shadow over him. Garth turned, half-expecting to see a killbeast loom near. It was a far less threatening figure, however. The pallid girl he’d first met, the one who’d let him in, stood in the doorway. Her silhouette was thin, but shapely, and despite his despairing state of mind, Garth thought her face was pleasant to look upon. He wondered at the absurdity of such thoughts at this dismal moment of his existence.

“What do you want?” he asked her.

She tilted her head to the left and advanced. He saw she wore only a thin robe of colored fiber. He blinked at her as she came closer. She reached out a hand and touched his brow. He flinched away, but allowed the contact. His eyes checked her for weapons-but saw only open, empty hands.

“Did you come here to gloat?” he asked.

She shook her head. She lightly kissed his brow where she had first touched him. The action surprised him, but again he allowed it. Was she possibly acting on her own volition? Perhaps her rider slept within her head, and she had seen his sorrow, and wished to comfort him. Hoping for the best, and too drained by the disaster he’d witnessed to care much about the present, he allowed her to sit beside him on a narrow folding workbench.

One thing soon led to another. His every touch she accepted without protest, but she did not allow him to kiss her mouth. He shrugged, not caring. He nuzzled her neck and ran his hands under her sheer robes. She made no attempt to withdraw, but instead pulled him more fully into an embrace with her.

Smiling wanly, she tapped at the floor, indicating he should lie there. He did so, smiling up at her. She hiked up her robes and mounted him. Soon, they were in the throes of passion. He was in ecstasy.

There came a moment of release, and afterward he opened his eyes again. There she was, looking down into his face. Finally, she was leaning down, pursing her lips to kiss him. He had wanted to kiss her as well. He burned to do it.

The spines stabbed his pursed lips, making him cry out. He tried to throw her off, but now she clung to him with maniacal strength. Even as he struggled, the neurotoxins began to paralyze him. His muscles became weak and rubbery within seconds.

The thing in her mouth crept out upon his face as he lay there, helpless in her grasp. They were still coupled, and her hands pinned his wrists. Each of her thin fingers were like steel cables, so weakened was he by the toxins that flowed in his blood now, coursing directly from his stung lips to his brain.

Inside his mind, Garth despaired. The Tulk had stayed in her mouth, with spines carefully retracted until this critical moment when she had spat it out onto his face. Now, it crawled over his cheek toward his nasal entrances, its spines stippling his skin with permanent, livid red tracks.

As the rider named Ornth dug into his skull and mounted him, Garth wondered vaguely what the skald girl’s name was. If he ever managed to regain the reins of his mind again, he decided he would ask her-and then he would kill her.