Heavens of Glory

2.2

And in the snap of his fingers, he had graduated. The shuttle was departing from Battle School now. He felt the jar as the docking clamps released. Soon he was falling again, heading back to the surface of the Water Planet, surrounded by newly-made Bonscouts, most of whom doubtless already had jobs lined up in the ranks of the Alliance military.
          But Orion had other plans for the summer, before he signed up as an ensign on a starship. Those plans awaited only the touch down of the shuttle on firm ground.
         Tournia ran to greet him as he stepped out of the vessel. After a quick hug, the two drove off together, not towards either of their flats, but rather towards the Star Arena Administration building halfway across the continent.
         Orion had found the love his life twice over. Once in Tournia, and again in piloting. He had the former, and now he had found a new way of experiencing the latter.
         Star Arena. The words echoed in his mind. Star Arena…

         The foul air of an alien world, one which had not felt the touch of any Alliance species in a millenium, flooded in through the open airlock. Orion stood in the opening, looking out into the hangar bay, now completely filled by the bulk of the Dead-ship. Claws echoed through the chambers as a squad of Tonorions approached down the tight corridor. Orion was stricken full-force by the fact that he had never been face to face with a Tonorion before, despite the fact that he had encountered them countless times in simulations and vids.
          The door slid open and the five-foot bulk of the beast entered. It could not look any more different from its Felon relative, with the forward bent back and strong tail, not quite as long as that of a lenothias, but just as powerful. The two slits in the side of its long snout revealed bright red pupils under filmy coverings. Rows of teeth appeared as it spoke.
          “Ah, Weelcoeme, Aeleeance, to thee Uenion sheep Freectiseeil.” He ran his hand over the beaten hull of the Dead-ship. “Ye sheep has endeured meuch beefeor comeeeng here, has eet net? Eet servived meny trebles beefer zis. And yet eet ees I, on zis lewlee warcrueeser, thet caeptuered ye. I shell bee reewerded meeny teemes fer zis.”
          “Go get slagged, slishk-hole.”
          “Aeh, bet eet ees ye who weell bee slagged, net mae.” The tonorion approached Orion, his head bobbing forward with every step. He pulled a thin metal rod off the long leather strap that ran the length of his spine and pushed it between Orion's wrists. He pulled a few dials in various directions too fast for Orion to see, and two green energy fields wrapped around his arms, suspending the bar between them.
          “"Breeng ze reest ev yer creew,” Orion's captor commanded as the rest of the tonorion squad moved towards the ship's airlock. “Doo net reseest, er ye weell be shet.” Orion found the strange double-laser pointing at his chest as the Tonorion pulled him away. The lizard twirled the weapon expertly around his hand and shoved it back into the strap on his back. Orion glanced quickly behind him as they entered the corridor and caught a brief glimpse of the rest of the crew coming out to be similarly bound.
         “Where are you taking me, fwext-slime?”
          “Eeneff of yer eenselts, Aelleeance. Ye aere mae capteeve new.” The scaly fiend shoved him hard in the back. “Ye aere gween te see ze cepteen of ze Freectiseeil.”
          “What, you mean that you're not the captain, with all your gloating?”
          “Shet-eep, huemeen-filth. Zet ees nen ev yer beesinees.” Orion was prodded in the back again, and this time he thought he could feel the tip of the tonorion’s laser. The tight, foreign corridor gave a sharp turn and revealed a lift with its doors open. The two stepped in and the lift accelerated down towards the center of the ship. The room stopped moving, and the doors opened again, revealing the confined bridge. Orion caught a glimpse of the main screen flicking off, but he could not tell what had been on it.
         The tonorion who had been standing near the front of the bridge whirled around as Orion entered, walking proudly ahead of his captor. The beast had a red flare hanging down from his protruding muzzle and a golden spine-belt that glittered in the purple light of the ship. It approached the Bonscout captain.
         “Whet es yer ship doeeng in aur space?” the tonorion demanded. His common galactic was more accurate than the previous enslaver. Orion refused to answer the question, but merely said the one response he was trained to give.
         “I am Captain Orion Terone, commissioned on the Alliance battlecruiser A Enga Neyna.”
         The lizard slapped him hard across his face with the small, clawed hand. “I deed net ask ye whet yer name wes, Captain. Why es yer ship heer?” Orion remained silent. “I em Rem Aleem-Trent. If ye do net answeer mae questeeon, I will send mae fleet ento yer homeworld. Now why es yer ship heer?”
         Orion tried to remember the tonorion naming system. He remembered that the first name was their ancestral one and the last was their rank, but he couldn’t remember what the different ranks meant. Presumably Trent was something high up.
         The tonorion slapped him again, drawing a thin line of blood over the bridge of his nose. “If ye will net talk, then I will breek ye. Take him down to ze breeg.” The first tonorion grabbed Orion roughly and hauled him back into the lift.
         In the four cells of the brig, Orion found the other fifteen member of the crew, but a certain green alien was missing. “Where’s Mork?” he asked the other three captives in his cell.
         “Don’t know. They must have assumed he was our captive, or something. The slishk-bags would have recognized him as not being part of our allied species, and they wouldn’t want to start another war on the side,” replied one cellmate, Chief Petty Officer Haclit.
         “I see.” Orion spoke up so that the prisoners in the other three cells could also hear him. “Alright, listen up everybody. First of all, I’m giving a field promotion to all of the enlisted Bonscouts. You now all carry the rank of ensign. Furthermore, all ensigns are now lieutenant j.g.’s. All lieutenant j.g.’s are now full lieutenants. All previous lieutenants shall be granted the emergency rank of superior lieutenant. I give you these new ranks not only because you deserve them, which all of you do, but also because you must remember at all times that you are officers of the Fleet. Further, any one of you is now authorized to take command of a ship if necessary. I hope that such circumstances that would bring about such a necessity should not come to be, but we cannot tell what the future holds in store.
         “Now, I gave their captain my identification. If they have any sense in them whatsoever, they will contact the AFC and inform them that we have been taken prisoner. This will alert the Alliance that we are still alive, even if we are in Union space.
         “The computer core on our ship is of course programmed to wipe itself clean if they try to access it, so there is a good chance they will try to get intelligence out of us. A psychic probe can be painful and permanently damaging if you fight it, so don’t resist if they try to use one on any of you. For now, just sit tight. We’ll survive this.”
         Orion sat down on the small ledge as he finished talking. He sat quietly, trying not to think. After a few minutes, he felt the slight jump in his throat and knew they had gone to hyperspace. He automatically tried to access the computer chip in the back of his head for the time, but remembered it was damaged. He looked over at the others in his cell and said, “Time?”
         Haclit, now an ensign, looked down at his wrist, but shook his scytherian head. “My watch stopped working.” The others signaled that theirs had also.
         Orion lay down on the ledge, tired, and shut his eyes.
         He was awoken some time later, he couldn’t tell whether it was minutes or hours, when the lights in the brig started to flash between purple and blue. A serious of reptilian trills sounded throughout the ship. Orion was startled to discover that the translator chip could interpret them- apparently whatever device they had used to stop the watches didn’t penetrate their skulls.
         “All warriors prepare for battle. We have contact with eighteen Alliance ships.” Orion’s heart leapt. Alliance ships! He looked over at the others.
         “Can you do anything to get us out of here?”
         Haclit shook his head. “The forcefields around the cells are too strong, and even if they fail, those bars behind them are probably poly-carbon made. There’s no way I’d be able to cut through them. The captain stood up anxiously and began pacing the cell. He banged his hand against the forcefield. “Damn! We can’t even let the other ships know we are here.” He held his fist against the burning energy as long as he could bare, which was less than two seconds. It came away smoking slightly. “Damn!” he repeated.
         Soon, however, the lights stopped blinking and returned to their normal dark shade of purple. The voice came back over the intercom, muttering in a serious of trills, clicks, and screeches, “The Alliance threat has been neutralized. Good job, my warriors! We are now resetting our course for our previous destination.” And again, Orion felt the ship jump into delta space.
         Orion found all the other Bonscouts looking at him, fear and horror written on their faces. He bowed his head solemnly. “May all the brave soldiers who died here find their way into the sucra and the love of the Schoona.” He looked around again. “Try not to imagine their deaths,” he said. “It’s even possible that there wasn’t a battle, that the tonorions just put on a show to scare us. Eighteen vessels would not venture into Union space alone.” And Orion started to wonder. Eighteen vessels? There’s no way they’d allow themselves to be caught in Union space, it would be absolute suicide. What if the Frectisiil wasn’t even in Union territory anymore? What if it had…
         Orion reminded himself to stop thinking about that sort of thing. It could only lead to bad results. There would be other times to mourn the dead properly, other times for speculation, but not now. Besides, if a Union warcruiser ever tried to get into Alliance territory, it wouldn’t last very long. Orion laid himself back on the ledge and tried to fall asleep once more.

*          *          *

         The counsel of admirals and generals wasted no time in their duty. The military history of every level nine and ten officer, effectivily all those in the counsel, was carefully scrutinized. The ideals of each were called to question, their leadership and strength put on trial. Within three days of Tash's death, when Black Status was still new in the minds of all, the Warring High Counsel announced their new leader to the populace of the Alliance.
          The artificially clean streets of Toan City were swept clean. Towering monstrosities, hundreds of floors tall, loomed over the gathering crowd, sporting banners and paint to the air. The administrative center for five hundred worlds and a trillion people turned into itself for one day of celebration.
         In a room deep within the military complex at Hera Spaceport the new warleader finished strapping on his uniform. A dozen medals hung over both sides of his chest. A hundred different colors glittered into the eye from all parts. The large metallic biolith shoulder plate jutted up from his right upper arm, decorated by the stained crimson emblem of the Warring branch hovering over the sign of the Fleet. A headdress of red and green cloth dangled over the sides of the Warleader Elect's head so that two bangles hung down along his cheeks. A similar cloth wove its way around his tail, forming intricate patterns. On his shoulder, where once had been the eight stripes of High-Admiral of the Fleet now stood a single patch, bearing the complicated insignia of the warleader in florescent blue, the graceful curves followed each other around the translucent decal.
          The scyther stood up and clacked his two blades in way of signaling his preparation. A thin triangular platinum and gold embroidered cloak was wrapped around his shoulders so that the tip of triangle hung halfway down his back. he picked up the Sceptor of the Alliance in his right hand and the whom-feather idol of power in his left as he headed for the door to the garage. Inside, hundreds of Boncouts were already assembled. Two hundred pilots from the Air Force stood in neat ranks towards the front of the metal cavern, followed by two hundred Navy sailors. Two-hundred fifty Fleet shipmen were lined up before the Horseless Chariot, and another two-hundred fifty behind, followed by another three hundred soldiers of the Army. Flanking the soldiers were dozens of citizen volunteers holding baskets of streamers.
          The new Warleader climbed into the Chariot, standing up in the strange open vehicle. In the Chariot behind him stood another citizen of the Alliance, completely unremarkable in all ways. The great doors leading out to the street opened, and the vehicles and floats began moving out, carrying the Triumvirs, Senators, and joyous celebrators. As the Horseless Chariot moved out into the streets, a distant speaker announced his entrance onto the pavement. “Warleader Hinto!” Amid loud cheers from the hundreds of thousands on the streets and in the balconies and the street-bridges of the buildings, the ignoble citizen behind Hinto began whispering so that only he could hear, “Remember, you are only a scyther. No matter what you see before you, you are not a god. Look back at yourself before this. Remember, you are only a scyther.”
         The procession pulled out into the streets. Countless onlookers cheered as confetti and streamers rained down from the hands of volunteers both in the parade and atop buildings. The lines of over a thousand Bonscouts marched along the avenues, the ranks separated into individual species for the sake of neatness. The Chariot rolled along, with two massive wheels on either side, and a third invisibly located underneath for stability. The roar from the crowd was all-but deafening as the Warleader passed, making his way towards the Curia.
         The parade halted as the Horseless Chariot drew alongside the Colossus, the emblem statue of the Alliance. Hinto stepped out of the open vehicle and strode towards the towering steel building as the crows parted to make way for him. Hinto strode beneath the looming statue towards the great double doors of the legislative center of the nation. No steps led up to the entrance- the Curia needed no height to signify its importance. Carla and the two Triumvir elects, who were filling in for the recent deaths of the other two, stood upon the raised platform, which had been erected before the gigantic steel wall so that the spectators could view this historic event.
         Hinto stood high and proud before the entire Alliance as the Alliancic Leaders gave their consent to his appointment, making his position of Warleader official.

*          *          *

         The Union warcruiser Frectisiil was perfect. Too perfect. Orion knew how to break out of the brig of the older Union models, but the Alliance had not obtained Union ship specs in centuries. The new construction designs of the ship was entirely foreign to the Bonscouts. There were no panels that could be hacked into, no crucial wires that could be sliced. Not so much as space for a mouse to crawl out.
         The design was perfect.
         And more perfect still, for since they had been captured, the Frectisiil had encountered enemy vessels countless times, many of which were reportedly quite powerful. Yet the warcruiser inevitably came out of them without so much as a scratch.
         Yet there must be weakness. Orion continued banging on the bulk-head plates of an unknown metal, searching for a hollow space. Nothing except solid metal revealed itself to his pounding.
         It was hopeless, though. The internal defenses were quite obvious from the cells. Even if they tore their way out of the cells, the wall-mounted lasers would shred them to bits instantly. They could do nothing but wait.
         And it seemed that waiting was enough. On their fifth day into captivity, Mork made an appearance.
         “Sorry I couldn’t get by earlier. These new people don’t seem to understand me very well.” Mork spoke to Scarth in the cell across from Orion’s. A tonorion stood by the door, but like Mork said, he didn’t seem to understand his speech very well.
         Scarth began to wave his tail in an unusual way. It took Orion a while to realize what he was doing, but Mork caught on fairly quickly. He was doing his best to imitate the motion of Mork’s preg, so that the tonorions couldn’t understand him. Orion watched as Scarth and Mork held a very strange silent conversation. He turned to look at the tonorion, but couldn’t come close to reading the reptile’s expression. Occasionally Mork would break out in some strange exclamation, designed, no doubt, to make it look like he was laughing at the prisoners in order to disguise the real conversation.
         When it was apparently done and Mork left the room, followed by the tonorion, Orion called out to Scarth in the warrior’s tongue.
         What did you say?
         I explained the situation. I told him that the tonorions were our enemy.
         And?
         And he didn’t really care. He didn’t want to make them his enemy as well.
         So he won’t help us?
         No.
         Orion looked disgruntled.
         You can understand where he’s coming from, though. I wouldn’t want to make unnecessary enemies either.
         I guess.
         Orion turned back into his cell and sat down on the ledge. Now all they had was time. Lots of time.

*          *          *

         Somewhere in the back of the shop a chime went off as Tournia pushed the door open manually. The old wood felt strange beneath her hand- most doors just opened automatically these days. The entrane slid shut on its oily hinges. No one looked up as she entered.
         She walked up to the vacant counter and waited. A felon appeared from behind a thin curtain.
         "Hey ther'. Whet cen I do fer ye?"
         "I'll just have a treskot. Thanks." The purple-skinned attendent pulled a few bottles out from below the counter and began mixing. He talked while he prepared the Frist-spawned drink.
         "Don't get many customers these days, not since the planet went on Black Status. Just the regulars." He moved one of his to scan the place, motioning to the other three people at the tables. He zapped the contents of the metal cup with Gamma-Ray lighter and the surface caught fire momentarily, then began to boil. He handed her the reaking beverage.
         "Thanks" Tournia said, taking the metal canister and droping a platinum and silver coin into the register. She headed over to the table in the corner and sat down, sipping the hot treskot, which tasted quite pleasant despite the fowl odor, reminiscent of burnt cabbage. She gazed around at the posters hanging around the room. On half of them the pictures no longer moved because of the power saving demanded by Black Status. The rest were sluggish as they changed designs. All were at least a week out of date, for none of the venders had bothered to update them after the switch.
         This morning, the central sectors had shown a huge difference from the lock-down atmosphere of Frist and the other colony planets. She had watched the inaugoration of the new Warleader that morning as it was broadcast live over the Beta Space relay system. Toan had been so alive- the streets had been filled with people, skimmers and aircraft had filled the skies. But Frist didn't have the luxuries of a planetary defense system. The planet could not afford to stand out as a worthwhile target to the Union.
         Tournia hoped the Black Status would be lifted soon now that a new Warleader had taken office. It was getting so damn lonely just hanging around the house. The town had a definitive atmosphere of desertion, a feeling of living in the slums pervaded. If only the school would reopen and she could get back to teaching.
         The chime sounded again as another patron opened the door. A cloaked figure opened the door. Odd, Tournia thought, as she continued to sip her treskot, not looking up. The sun was too bright outside to warrant such a cloak. The stranger didn't stop at the counter, where the felon had now reappeared, but rather just continued through the shop. Tournia got a glimpse of the black folds passing by just over the floor and the shape of a tail covered by an extension of the cloth. The unknown person passed on and out the back door.
         Tournia looked up as she heard the door close. A light flickered as one of the 'regulars' finished his drink and stood up to leave. A small slip of paper wafted across Tournia's desk as the departer opened the door. She picked up, wondering where everybody got all this paper in the first place.
         There were only two words on the paper, yet those two words were enough to stir Tournia into activity. It merely said in large, hand-written letters, "HE'S BACK." There was only one person in Tournia's mind who that could possibly refer to. She jumped up, leaving the half-empty drink on the table and nearly ran out the back door.
         She emerged into the bright sunlight, such a startling contrast from the darkened coffee shop. There was a small courtyard behind the establishment, paved in cobbles and surrounded by unwindowed walls. She caught sight of the covered tail disappearing around the corner and she ran after it. She found the stranger standing in front of a wall, moving his concealed arms in a strange way. Tournia tried to grab his shoulder, but found that the neck merely turned smoothly into the back, with no shoulder to grab onto.
         "Who are you?" she demanded.
         The figure turned from the wall to face her. Sunlight struck down into the hood and revealed its face. "Yer weerst nieghtmeer."
         And Tournia ran. Without thinking, she turned and fled the apparition. She banked hard around the walls of the alley until she reached the main street, and she continued running. She had seen an unspeakable terror beneath that dark hood. Terribly sharp teeth and an unnaturally long reptilian muzzle had poked into the light as two narrow-slitted eyes had gazed out into her own brown pupils.
         She could see the farmhouse now. Her breath was completely lost to her, but she kept on running as fast as she could. She chanced a quick look behind to see if the tonorion was persuing her, but there was no sign of it. She ran down the road leading towards Orion's house and stopped.
         There they were, not even trying to hide themselves now. Five more tonorions stood just outside the structure, the midday sun gleaming off the assortment of instruments on their back-belts. Tournia dove into the tall stalks of tuker that were growing along the road.
         Why the hell were they after her? What in the galaxy could possibly make her a target to those schkraft-bags? And stars, could Orion really be back?
         She crawled through the rows of tuker until she reached the street again. Bending over to make sure her head didn't stick up above the tall green grain, she moved south as fast as she could. The shadows of the tuker formed a pattern of bars beneath her feet. It took her twenty minutes to reach the nearest house. She ran up the road to the wooden structure and banged her hand over the buzzer till it hurt.
         At last, the door slid open and the friendly face of a monte appeared. "Oh, hey Ternia. Whet cen I do fer ye?"
         Breathless, Tournia only spouted out one word. "Tonorions."
         Sheila froze, then shook her head in dismissal. "Now Ternia, I den't know whet..."
         "Please, Sheila. Tonorions are at my house. They're waiting for me. I need your computer." Tournia barged right past the blue-haired quadruped and into the living room. She had visited the house a few times before, and she knew where the console to the house's computer was. She connected to it and hurled into the world-net.
         Sheila watched as Tournia sped through sites with lightening speed until she arrived at the Frist travel agency.
         "Where are Ento and Grick?"
         "They're out in the fields with the droids."
         "Get them in here. Call them in. It's too dangerous now. Get them in now!"
         Sheila nodded and trotted off to the rear door. She tapped on the communications display and spoke into it.
         Tournia found a pilot willing to come right down to town of Russel. She booked a flight and a message came up asking for payment. She looked quickly at the few coins she had in her pocket- it wasn't enough, so she typed in the authorization for her account on Toan.
         She was sure that the Alliance government would be checking her account regularly for any use, but she had no other choice. It was either come out of hiding and face the government, or stay and face the tonorions. She transferred the necessary marks over to the pilot.
         She looked back up to Sheila, who was standing over her shoulder again. "Do you have any lasers?"
         The monte shook her head. "Jes' an old fletchet pistol epstairs thet Ento won't teoch, and I wen't let Grick go near et."
         "Where?"
         "Et's up in a case in the back closet. I den't know where the key es."
         "Show me the case." Sheila nodded slightly and headed up the ramp to the second story, with Tournia right behind. The monte opened up the door to the closet an a light turned on.
         "Over ther, in the cerner. I relly den't see what good et'll do ya. Like I sed, I don't have the key, end nene ef us know how te use et."
         Tournia stepped over to the case. She tapped the front twice, then punched through it with all her might. The clear casing shattered. She shook her hand in pain from the impact, but it was uncut. "Shard glass," she explained. "It only fractures along certain lines." She pulled the fletchet pistol out and loaded a few cartridges from the bottom of the case into it.
         "They make you learn how to shoot when you apply for residency status on Toan. That's another one of the disadvantages to being constantly at war. Everyone has to know how a gun works." She turned and left the small closet. The light turned off as the door slid shut behind her.
         "Alright. Give a call to the Bonscouts over at Gambria. Tell them we have sightings of tonorions over at Orion's place. I'm gonna go wait by the front door and shoot any of those lizards that I see." Looking out throught the front windows, the land seemed as peaceful as ever. The tall crops of green tuker over on Orion's farm were visible from here, swaying gently in the hot sunlight. The lines of squash of both farms were maturing well underneath the blue sky. The tree-covered hills, home to farmers of olives and scretlis, rose up behind the distant Russel. Just barely visible on the horizon was the merest hint of the blue sea, beneath the terraformed blue sky.
         Yet out there in that peaceful landscape, Tournia knew that the fields were swarming with tonorions. Horrid, wretched beasts!
         Ento and Grick came in through the rear door. They saw Tournia sitting by the window and said hello to her, then went in to talk to Sheila. She heard the three montes murmering in the back.
         Two ships appeared in the sky, barely visible in the haze of distance. They approached rapidly until the shapes of Ret Fighters, standard issue aircraft, were visible. The flew right past the farmhouse and over Orion's estate, where they suddenly launched a volley of missiles. Tournia gasped as the missiles exploded against empty blue, and the void blackness of chameleon armor became momentarily visible over the house before returning to the steady sky-blue. Two tanks started coming up the road as a sleek vessel roared down from above. Tournia recognized the latter as her transport out of here.
         She pressed the pistol into the unwilling hand of Sheila. "Here. If the tonorions come close, just point and shoot. I'll see you around, OK?" Sheila nodded, her eyes wide with fear. Tournia gave her a quick hug. "It's been fun." She ran out the front door and straight into the opening hatch.
         Inside were only three seats, one of which was occupied by the pilot. She turned around and said, "You Tournia?"
         "Yeah. Now let's get going. There're Tonorions all over the place." She swung into a chair as the hatch slammed shut. The inside was sleek and polished, probably a military refit.          "Alright. One direct flight to Toan for one passenger." The walls turned from there flat grey to a pleasant yellow as the engines hummed into life and the craft took off.
         Well, this is it, Tournia thought. I'm going home. No more hiding.
         The vessel streaked upwards through the atmosphere.