Twelve
Stevan
My communication portal was open but I was paying it scarce attention. Catherina was giving her first public speech since the announcement that Torruy and Vularra were to be bonded and were already with child. She’d modified the speech slightly, adding in a few digs at the scavengers waiting to pick over the carcass of the Peoples. With every bit of good news, she was making their position more and more irrelevant. I might still have to stand for breaking the Prime Law, but those that thought the Peoples should go quietly into the long darkness were losing credibility by the day.
I’d positioned my portal front and center where I could see and hear her when she took the stage. I could hear the rumble of the crowd but I was unable to make out their words. When she took the stage, I would adjust my portal to allow her nanites transmission to pass so I could understand her. I’d learned a great many English words, but most of them were intimate and would only be shared with lovers.
English was a complicated language with subtly that often felt like I was missing, and despaired ever understanding. For example, despite her numerous attempts to explain it to me, I couldn’t fully understand the difference between sex, fucking, and making love. She appeared to use them interchangeably, yet she insisted there was a difference. Why were there so many words for the same thing? She’d once laughingly told me there were hundreds, if not thousands of ways to say mating in English. Banging. Sleep with, even though it had nothing to do with sleeping. Fornicate. Pound. Screw. Shag. I smiled to myself. The Humans were truly obsessed with mating, but that was exactly what the universe needed right now.
I glanced at the portal showing the empty stage, then returned to my task and forced myself to focus on the reports in front of me. It was much more pleasant to think about mating with Catherina than the latest reports on hath or grain production, or the various requests for the assistance of the Firaspatciti guard.
Every planet had a policing force, charged with keeping the peace, but the guard could be called in if necessary. In my tenure as Lord, the guard had only been dispatched for assistance in keeping order during natural disasters or to aid in the tracking down and capturing the dregs of the Peoples preying on others. Only the Firaspatciti had the authority to engage in police or military actions on a planet other than our own. It was a sacred trust given to us by the other Peoples, and by tradition and law, I had to approve each request. It seemed rather pointless and silly because I never denied the assistance, but our law and the trust given to us by the Peoples forbade the sending of the guard to another planet without the express approval of the Lord.
Movement caught my eye and I glanced up and watched as Catherina took the stage. I enabled the nanite frequency and suddenly the babble of the Boforous language became Firaspatciti.
“Thank you for inviting me here!” Catherina said as she stepped onto the stage.
I smiled. She was a rock star, and this was her gig. To the best of my understanding, that meant she was extremely popular and this was what she did. I smiled again. She was a woman that often spoke in riddles and could hold two conflicting opinions at the same time. She was confusing, infuriating, and the most remarkable woman in the universe, and I knew I would never fully understand her… but, oh, how I looked forward to trying.
I paused to watch her for a few minutes, listening to her speech. Like all her speeches, it was full of hope, humor, and enthusiasm. Even though I’d seen her do it dozens of times, it never ceased to amaze me how she so easily connected to the Peoples, no matter who they were.
I was just about to turn back to my tasks, boring as they were when the portal suddenly closed. With a frown, I tried to reestablish the tunnel, but the portal refused to open. Portals don’t just close. They work using the natural laws of the universe, and until the universe itself stopped operating, the portals would work. It was almost as if… I felt a chill of dread. I opened a portal to the grand hall, to make sure my portal device wasn’t faulty. The portal opened. I tried to open a portal at another location on Boforous and it opened as well. I tried again at Catherina’s location. When the portal failed to open, my dread grew. I was using the commercial portal that nearly every citizen of the universe had, but my portal device and all of the large, fixed portals on Firaspatciti were special. By the authority given to us by the Peoples of the universe, we could bypass a portal damping field. I changed the mode on my device and tried again. The portal opened and my blood ran cold.
As I watched, a surge of men was mounting the stage as Tokalas and Peval skidded to a stop beside Catherina.
“Run!” Peval screamed as she began to engage the men.
“Guards to Lady Catherina! Guards to Lady Catherina!” Tokalas yelled as he took a stance and prepared to meet the attack.
Something was very wrong. I spun the portal and the guards assigned to Catherina were milling about in confusion as if they were unsure of what to do. I slammed my hand down on the desk, activating the palace alarm.
“Blue emergency! Blue emergency!” I yelled, alerting the palace garrison commander. “Lady Catherina is under attack!”
I knew Catherina was tracked and within moments, additional guards would begin pouring through portals in aid.
“The stage!” a guard yelled. “To the stage!” With roars of rage, her security force began charging toward the stage. They were providing security at the outer edge and it would take time for them to get there as they roughly shoved their way through the crowd.
It had only been seconds since the group of men charged the stage. I shifted the portal back to the stage. Peval and Tokalas were in mortal combat with ten times their number, slashing and thrusting with short and long blades. I changed the portal to allow me to pass and charged through. I only had my short blade, but I had to help Catherina.
I landed on the stage in the melee. “Catherina! To me!” I screamed as I began to thrust and hack.
She didn’t move, staring at me with wide eyes. Peval and Tokalas, realizing that I had arrived to aid them, changed their tactic, trying to break the wave of the attacking horde so I could reach her.
We were being overwhelmed, unable to kill the attackers fast enough. A man got past Peval, and though I saw it, I was helpless to prevent it.
“Catherina! Run!” I screamed. Again, she didn’t move, then at the last moment, she saw the man charging at her with his blade in the attack position.
I dispatched another of the murderous bastards with a vicious slash to the throat, then spared a glance to see her slide under his attack in a classic Firaspatciti move and draw her blade across his throat as he passed.
I roared with rage, as our bubble of protection began to collapse. I felt the searing burn of a blade plunging into my side, unable to block the thrust of man’s knife as I was dealing with another. Peval screamed as blood gushed from a wound on her shoulder just as she removed a man’s head from his body with a vicious cut of her long blade.
Tokalas took a step back and turned, bringing his blade down to sever the arm of a man that had slipped past our defense as he tried to plunge his blade into Catherina. That left him exposed and before he could recover, another attacker buried a blade in his back.
Catherina ducked under another man’s cut, driving her blade into his stomach as Tokalas went to his knees, cutting the legs from another that tried to pass as he did. He bellowed again as another plunged his blade into his chest, but he grabbed the man and pulled him down onto his short blade as he fell.
“No!” she screamed as another blade plunged into my shoulder from a thrust I wasn’t fully able to block.
I recognized the word as English, but I didn’t know what it meant. That was why she hadn’t run. The nanites translations were being blocked and she couldn’t understand us. I should have realized that when the guard didn’t immediately respond to Tokalas’s cry for help. Without the nanites transmitting his call, they hadn’t heard him. If only I could reach her, I could open a portal and get her away.
I’d just blocked another thrust when the rest of her security detail arrived, swarming the stage. Attacked from the rear, the attackers were thrown into confusion and the tide began to turn. Peval and I pressed our advantage, trying to protect Tokalas and Catherina. An instant later, palace guard began pouring through portals, surrounding us, and the battle was over.
It had felt like hours, but as I staggered, panting in exhaustion, I knew it had been only seconds. Blood was gushing from my side and shoulder, but the nanites were already hard at work, suppressing the pain and repairing the damage. I would live.
“My Lord!” Bruth said, arriving at my side. “We have to get you away!”
“Catherina,” I panted.
“Stevan!” she cried, rushing to my side, but the rest of her words were a jumble of sounds. “…I can’t understand what anyone is saying! Please, Stevan! Oh my God! Please, you have to help him! Please, please, please,” she cried grasping at me and then pulling her hands back before she touched me, only to reach for me again.
“Shhh…” I whispered. “It’s okay.”
She threw herself into my arms and I hissed. The nanites only dulled the pain, they didn’t completely remove it.
“I was so scared! I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying, and I didn’t know what to do! Peval and Tokalas always said stay with them and—”
I held her as medics worked on Tokalas and Peval. They’d just have to wait to start on me for I needed this far worse than I needed medical care.
“You’re safe now,” I said, holding her head to my shoulder.
The guard was getting control of the situation, moving people out and establishing a perimeter around us with the assistance of the Boforous security force.
“My Lord, you need medical care,” Jarurel said softly.
I slowly released Catherina and another medic pulled her aside to make sure she was uninjured. As Jarurel applied specialized nanites to my wounds to speed the healing and stop the bleeding, I looked at the carnage. The stage was littered with bodies of our fallen enemies. Peval and Tokalas had fought like a pair of cornered keggars. They’d held off ten times their number long enough for help to arrive, and had paid dearly for it. I looked around again. Someone was going to answer for this.
“My Lord, I thought you’d want to know. Lady Catherina is uninjured,” the medic that had worked on her reported.
I sagged in relief. Peval was on her feet, the clots of nanites on her shoulder, leg, and arm clearly visible, but Tokalas was being carried on a litter.
“Tokalas?” I asked.
“Gravely injured, my Lord. We got to him in time and injected him with medical nanites. It will take some time, but he will recover fully.”
I gripped Jarurel on the shoulder and smiled grimly. I looked at my wounds. The lacerations had completely disappeared under the clot of nanites as the millions of tiny machines worked their way through the injury, sealing blood vessels, repairing nerve damage and knitting muscle.
In a couple of days, even the scar would be gone, but it will take much more than nanites to soothe my rage and quench my wrath.