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Post By The Hooded Hood says "Come on guys, let's get some chatter going out there. Good grief!" Sat Jul 02, 2005 at 07:36:32 am EDT |
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#219: Untold Tales of the Fall of Caph: Shazara Pel Must Die! (or The Saga of the Eleventh and Twelfth Caphans) | |
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#219: Untold Tales of the Fall of Caph: Shazara Pel Must Die! (or The Saga of the Eleventh and Twelfth Caphans) Image by Visionary “History is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.” Voltaire All over the planet the cities were burning as the rioters destroyed centuries of art and architecture in their rage. “This can’t be happening!” Prince Aarmus gasped as he saw the Tower of Eternity crumble into the Deleen River. “This isn’t possible.” “The tide of history is hard to turn,” Ancient Shadara of the Thonnagarians observed with the clinical detachment of one who has seen her own world die. “For too long you have ignored the voices calling for change on your world, you and your Caliphate Council. It was only a matter of time before the voices stopped calling of reform and began calling for blood.” The frightened nobles of Caph XI huddled together in the Caliph’s Palace. “What shall we do?” Voosin of Veliix worried. “There is no order, no law. Our personal forces can’t overcome such planetary lawlessness.” “The risen slaves have access to weaponry they couldn’t have acquired on-planet,” Prince Aarmus pointed out. “Nor should they have been able to learn of the… difficulties of our mission with the Lovetoads against the Terrans. Somebody has been spreading propaganda, whipping them up…” “We are merely guests on your world, visitors,” Josdir Vak noted, flexing his ceremonial flight wings as he stood beside the leader of the Thonnagarian survivors of the destruction of Pigeonworld, “but if you request it we would be pleased to help you defend yourselves against these upstarts.” “Would that not suggest that we are weak, unable to protect ourselves?” Aarmus objected. “Would it not rather suggest that we command more forces than these rebellious ignoramuses could ever imagine?” Voosin suggested. He turned to the young boy on the throne, “Your eminence, I recommend we seek the aid of our Thonnagarian allies.” “You have been most… kind in offering us refuge on your planet,” Ancient Shadara noted, her elaborate white braids bobbing as she nodded. “While some might feel that the technology we offered you is fair compensation for our accommodation, I yet command the remnants of the High Eyrie, and if you seek our aid it will not be denied.” Prince Kivaan was twelve years old, surrounded by advisors forty and fifty years his senior. He perched on the Caliph’s throne and wished his legs comfortably reached the ground. He looked round at his tutors to see what answer he should give to the Thonnagarian’s offer. “Our world is burning,” Voosin pointed out. “Some enemy has armed the malcontents and stirred them up with stories of Vaahir and Terrans and universal suffrage. Nothing can save our civilisation unless we accept the help of the Pigeonpeople.” “We still have the orbital weapons platforms,” Prince Aarmus pointed out. “If we could find a way of directing their fire inwards rather than as a defence against invasion from space…” “That is the strategy we would adopt also,” agreed Battle Leader Josdir Vak. “We could make the adjustments very quickly if you would only release the command codes for override.” The latest set of explosions were very near the palace. “We have no choice,” Voosin advised urgently. “Your eminence, we need to act!” “Prince Aarmus?” Kivaan checked. “Yes,” agreed the leader of the House of Aarixus. “I don’t see we have any alternative now. We have to bring this thing under control immediately, and brute force is the only thing these peasants understand.” The rest of the Emirate Council voiced their agreements. “Very well,” Ancient Shadara answered. “The Thonnagarian remnant have heard the pleas of the nobles of Caph. We will respond to your call.” “Transfer the command codes,” Voosin called. “When we realign the orbital drone platforms we’ll decimate these rebels!” Josdir Vak checked on his wrist monitor. “The codes are transferred,” he noted. “We no longer need to pretend.” His razor-sharp artificial wing lashed out and sliced off Prince Voosin’s head. “This planet is now the lawful conquest of the Thonnagarian Empire,” Ancient Shadara announced to the horrified Caliphate council. “Your only defence against our fleet has just been turned over to our control. You will all consider yourselves slaves of the great Eyrie.” “Useless slaves at that,” Josdir Vak added. “We can use your people and your world’s resources once we shut down the rebellion we covertly provoked, but you nobles are just a waste of air.” He turned to his elite security force. “Slaughter them all. Bring me the head of the little Caliph.” The gravity pulse shattered the ornate stained glass window of the Caliph’s council room, scattering panicking Caphan and attacking Pigeonwarrior alike. Before anyone could react, Shazana Pel had barrelled into the room, downed the two Thonnagarians closest to the boy-king, scooped him up in her arms and u-turned out into the city beyond. “After her!” shouted Josdir Vak. “Bring her down!” “The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.” Voltaire Lee Bookman shut down the communication console and turned to D.D. with a sigh. “I can’t get any sense out of the Caphan system,” he admitted. “It looks like war, but the IOL has shut down and evacuated the Cassiopeian branch of the Library because there was too high a risk of danger with the Thonnagarian fleet on the move, so I can’t get any good information.” The Lunar Public Library’s computer sentience checked and verified her Librarian’s findings. “I’m sure that Shazana Pel will be careful,” D.D. lied. “It was a big step forward for her to decide to stand up to her own people because she disapproved of what they were going to do.” “I thought letting her see the literature of the Thonnagarians would be a good thing,” Lee Bookman replied. “I thought she might be able to come to terms with her exile, to see being cast out in a different light…” “She’s a trained warrior, Lee,” D.D. pointed out. “Given access to the Cassiopeian archive of course she’s going to go for the coded military documents. The Intergalactic Order of Librarians retrieved a near-complete set of security files from Thonnagar before it was destroyed in the Crisis, and that included the plans for the subversion and conquest of Caph XI.” “I know. Now,” the Librarian admitted. “I sometimes forget that people don’t always want information for purely scholarly reasons. But she was so upset by her people’s plans – said it was dishonourable, an insult to the memory of those noble Pigeonwarriors who had gone before – that I had to loan her the Galactibus so she could go protest. But what does she think she’s going to achieve by going into a war zone and taking on the entire elite combat troops of her people?” “You could send her help,” D.D. suggested. “I’m sure if the Lair Legion knew what was happening on Caph…?” “They’d go support the slave owners in their fight to prevent universal suffrage? They’d take on the remnants of the Thonnagarians who are desperate for a new homeworld? The Lair Legion’s a local organisation, at its best when it’s fighting in clear cut moral conflicts. Besides, Pel made me swear not to let any of the heroes know where she was going or what she was doing.” D.D. caught that momentary smug look on Lee Bookman’s face. “So what did you do instead?” she demanded. “This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.” Voltaire Pel deflected their energy blasts with her mace while twisting away between the burning towers of the capitol. “The seven greatest warriors of our race were selected for the Transworlds Challenge,” she reminded her pursuers over her helmet radio link. “Only I survived the contest. What does that suggest, little boys with your new-feathered wings?” “Kill her!” shrieked Vak. “Butcher her where she flies!” Shazana Pel twisted aside and hammered her mace into one of the tall cupola towers she was threading between, accelerating the g-force on her weapon through the Z-alloy wristbands that gave her the power of flight. The shattered structure toppled between the pursuing Pigeonwarriors, scattering them. “Who are you?” Prince Kivaan gasped as he was powered away from the laser blasts that sought to end his dynasty. “Somebody who doesn’t like Josdir Vak,” his rescuer answered. “A true Thonngarian.” “A rebel?” The Caliph of Caph wondered if there was anybody on the planet he could trust now. “An outcast,” Shazana Pel replied. “Bereft of honour or rank, a pariah to my people. You’d prefer to be rescued by someone more prestigious?” “I’m being rescued?” The pigeonwarrior banked suddenly to avoid an incoming cadre of Thonnagarian hunters, reinforcing the gravitic sheath around her wings so she could cut through the pylons supporting the viaduct to drop it down at her enemies. “I’m not just doing this for exercise. I don’t agree with the Eyrie conquering your world just because you’re all primitive soft fools. I must be going soft myself.” “We’ve done nothing to deserve such war,” Kivaan protested. “You’ve done plenty, little Caliph,” Shazana Pel snorted, “However you wrap it up slavery is abhorrent. Nobody should be helpless and powerless. Nobody! But I’m getting you out of here. Perhaps when you’re grown to be a man you’ll return and do something to right things.” “I can’t leave Caph in the hands of conquerors,” Kivaan argued. “Nor of rebels. You may despise our social system, but it works two ways you know. I am responsible for even the meanest slave here, and I cannot abandon them to this anarchy.” Pel grunted something that might even have been approval. “But you pick your fights,” she advised the last of the ruling house of Caph. “It’s not enough to simply fight. You must learn to win.” “And so we run away?” Kivaan asked bitterly. The Thonnagarians were closing all around Pel now, above and below. “We find a better place to make our stand,” the Pigeonwoman declared. “Another time when things might turn out different.” “There she is!” called Josdir Vak. “Take her alive! I want that t’vlek to suffer before she dies!” “Not today, Vak,” Pel snarled back at him. “You held me down helpless and dishonoured me once. Never again.” And she thumbed the remote control to signal the Galactibus to enter Caph’s atmosphere for an emergency extraction. Except that the Thonnagarians had blocked all radio transmissions from the surface, and the signal never got through. “You were saying?” Josdir Vak leered. “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” Voltaire “This way,” Kiivas of the House of Raael insisted, almost dragging his daughter behind him into the Hall of Artefacts. “Hurry up. The force field is independently coded but its only a matter of time before those alien scum break the coding or destabilise the projector matrix. We haven’t got long.” Ohaana did her best to keep up, although she didn’t understand. “What’s going on, father? Is it raiders? The world has gone mad!” Kiivas’s hands were flying over the complex security panels that sealed the inner halls. “Rebellion fomented by our enemies, foolishness compounded by the Caliphate Council. The end of the world,” he snapped back. “But though others may have been found wanting, our House shall do its duty to the end.” Ohaana swallowed hard. “Are… is everyone else dead? Peerin, and Deenis, and… and mother?” “If they aren’t they soon will be,” Kiivas said in a lifeless voice. “They’ve planned well, those Pigeonmen. We took them in because we thought we could use their technology to rise to glory. Like fish we swallowed the hook. Now we pay the price for our hubris.” The security systems were glitching already because of the virii the rebels had loosed into the system, but the Hall of Artefacts had defences independent of the network and still responded to its keeper’s commands. The doors swung open. Prince Kiivas pulled Ohanna into the darkened interior. “What are we going to do?” the girl asked, biting back her tears. Her twelve years hadn’t prepared her for this, but she was a daughter of the House of Raael and she would not disgrace her lineage. “What is the first duty of our House, since ancient days?” her father demanded. “To guard the sacred relics of the Caliph of Caph, to the last of our blood though the world burn around us. This is the first duty,” Ohanna answered by rote. She had known the words before she could even speak them. Then she realised what she had said. “Oh.” “This is the last blood, Ohanna,” Prince Kiivas told her. “You and I. My sons, your brothers, are dead. Everyone is dead. Only you and I remain to save the honour of our House and the future of our people.” As he was speaking Kiivas was opening display cases, bundling objects into a course canvas sack. He ignored many of the great and ostentatious treasures of the ambry, selecting those items whose worth was valued not for their gems or artistry but for their significance to Caph: the first crown of the Caliphate, the Honour Sword of Gaath, the B’Tari Codex, the Xindii Vision Stones. He bundled in the Sceptre of Korrvis and the Orb of Truul almost as afterthoughts. Ohanna saw what he was doing and ran over to Terminal One, the master-console of the Caphan database. Remembering long and painful lessons she over-rode the system protocols and downloaded the entire contents onto a dozen data crystals. The lineages and histories of all the peoples of Caph, from the highest to the lowest, resided in her hands; every song and story, the heritage of her people. “Good girl. Well thought,” Kiivas approved. “Now take this sack. Careful with it, you carry the hope of our world.” “But where do we go, father?” Ohanna asked. There was an electric squeal beyond the hall as the force field was negated. “They have us surrounded.” The Keeper of the Hall of Artefacts touched the controls again. A door Ohanna had never suspected slid open, revealing a narrow staircase beyond. “That way, child,” Kiivas told her. “Run. Someone will be waiting for you.” That was when Ohanna realised that her father wasn’t coming with her. “My lord?” “No more, Ohanna. This is our parting, daughter. I must remain here, with my duty. You must go, carrying yours. Thus even as the world ends in fire our House is not found to be wanting. I bequeath you to the man you will find at the bottom of those stairs. He is your owner now. Look to him for hope, for life.” “Father?” “Keep those things you carry safe, Ohanna of Raael, Ekooria’s daughter. The time will come when worlds will depend upon your faithfulness. Now run!” There was no time to say other goodbyes. The doors to the hall were blasted asunder and the Pigeonwarriors were there. Kiivas closed the secret passage to conceal Ohanna’s flight then fingered the destruct sequence that would render the whole Hall of Artefacts to debris. Ohanna fled blindly down the dark staircase, never stopping until she stumbled into the arms of the stranger who was her new master. “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” Voltaire Shazana Pel took Prince Kivaan straight down, dropping like a stone through the gathered ranks of Thonnagarians. She dropped her mace before her, charged with gravity so it fell as if on a world where the constant of acceleration was much greater. The weapon impacted with the roadway below as if it had been struck with a meteor, toppling surrounding towers, sending rebel, loyalist, and invader alive tumbling and fleeing the falling towers. Pel dropped right through the hole she’d created into the sewer tunnels below, retrieving her mace as she dived. She was away through the underground tunnels before Josdir Vak could reassemble his platoon. “What now?” Kivaan asked his strange rescuer. “I take it your escape plan didn’t work out?” “They’re jamming my signal,” Pel replied. “Do you know where your transmission towers are?” The young Caliph was ashamed that he didn’t. He was beginning to realise how ignorant he was about so many aspects of the way his planet worked. “What do we do now?” he asked miserably. “When faced with a superior force a soldier has three options,” Shazana Pel told him. “Run, hide, fight. We’ll try and outdistance Vak’s forces. They’ll not all be trained for close-quarters manoeuvring as I am, so the tunnels give us some advantage. We’ll seek a place to hole up while we get better intelligence about how to silence that transmission jamming field. And if all else fails then by F’Lir we shall give our enemies a battle they will remember to the last generation.” The sewer ahead of them exploded. Pel jinked aside, shielding the young Caliph, taking fragments of molten metal into her own shoulder. “What’s that?” Kivaan gasped. Behind them another explosion collapsed more of the sewer system. “That is Josdir Vak trying to flush us out,” the pigeonwoman grimaced. “He knows that we can’t stay down here indefinitely while he mass-drives whole portions of the tunnel network. Clever, but a coward’s solution.” Another chunk of sewer exploded ahead of them. “You are wounded,” Kivaan observed. “You have my permission to leave me here and seek your escape. I will take your advice and run, hide, then fight.” “I don’t give up,” Pel told him. “Death holds no fear for me. Only life.” Then the hidden passage behind them slid open with a rusty grinding sound. “Your eminence!” a shrill voice called out. “This way, my lord!” Prince Kivaan swung round, his eyes widening as he saw his unlikely rescuer. “Ohanna of Raael?” The girl folded her arms into an obstinate pose. “You’d prefer to be rescued by somebody else?” she challenged. “Come on. These are the old security tunnels, from ancient times. They’re reinforced.” “You know this child?” Pel demanded as she rose and followed Kivaan into the tunnels. “She can be trusted?” “Her house has ever been loyal to mine,” the Caliph admitted. “But I do not recognise her guardian,” he added, as he saw the dark silhouette in the shadows. “You – who are you? Slave or noble?” “Men are equal. It is not birth but virtue that makes the difference,” the stranger answered. “Voltaire.” Kivaan noticed that the speaker was an alien, of similar hue to that of the Thonnagarians. “Is he with you?” he asked Shazana Pel. “No,” replied the pigeonwoman suspiciously. “I do not know this Voltaire.” The stranger snorted. “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers,” he quoted again. “Would you like to live? If so, follow me.” “My father bequeathed me to him,” Ohanna declared. She held up the heavy sack she was carrying. “He has helped me bring away the treasures of Caph.” Kivaan realised what the girl had brought. “You saved the Caliphate Crown and the Honour Sword? You?” “I am of the House of Raael,” she answered defiantly. Then, glancing at the stranger who led them through ancient tunnels as if he had built them himself. “Well, I was,” she added uncertainly. “Where are you taking us?” Shazana Pel demanded of their guide. “Voltaire?” The man touched a concealed stone and another doorway opened. Beyond was a suite of subterranean chambers, dusty but well-furnished in an antique style. “In combat there are four options,” he answered. “We have run, and now we hide.” “And later we will fight,” Shazana Pel admitted. “But there is no fourth choice.” “Of course there is,” the stranger answered. “One can also deceive.” “He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.” Voltaire “Master, what should I do?” Ohanna asked miserably. The refugees had settled in the hidden chambers while the search raged for them above. Their hiding place was concealed from electronic scanners, but Josdir Vak was methodical in his malice and the hunt continued. Now as night fell and there was no other distraction, Kiivas’ daughter faced her fears and knelt before her new owner. “Do?” The stranger seemed nonplussed for a moment, and then he understood. “Ah. Since you are my property you wish to learn whether will I require sexual services of you. No, Ohanna, you are far too young for duties of that kind.” The girl bristled even as she felt a surge of relief wash over her. “Lord Voltaire, I have been well trained…” “It is my wish that you retain your innocence. My command.” “Yes, my lord. Then…?” “Then what?” Ohanna swallowed. “Then shall I fulfil my other duties as a chattel of the House of Voltaire? We have a guest, the highest of guests, Prince Kivaan of Caph himself. And he too has lost his kin and his home and he is all alone.” She wiped a tear from her own eye. “H-he must be feeling very lonely,” she said. “He should not be alone.” “You may attend to him,” her master told her. “But see he takes no liberties with my property.” “Thank you, my lord. Oh thank you.” She rose from her knees to hurry away, then paused to look back. “He’s the Caliph of Caph, but he’s just a little boy as well, you know.” “I can think of no-one who could attend him better just now. Go to him. Share his sorrows and yours. It is my will.” “Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?” Voltaire “I am ashamed to have you attend me, Ohanna.” “There is no other, my Prince. You will have to make do.” “That’s not what I mean. You have won great honour by your deeds today, and your value has risen accordingly. You will find a place in the ballads, and your father too. I mean that I am ashamed of myself.” “You won free from our enemies, your eminence. You survived.” “I was rescued by that Thonnagarian warrior-maid,” Kivaan answered. “It was her deeds, not mine, that saved my life. I have been a weak and foolish Caliph and my kingdom bleeds and burns for it.” “You were betrayed by the Emirate Council and deceived by wicked aliens.” “Yet still the blame lies with me.” Kivaan looked at the Honour Sword of Gaath that lay on the bed beside him. “I do not think that I deserve to live.” “Don’t you touch that!” Ohanna commanded him. “Don’t you dare!” Kivaan blinked then frowned in anger. “You dare, a mere slave…?” “I dare?” the girl retorted. “Of course I dare. My family vowed to protect those things as our first duty. Above fortune or happiness or future, to guard the sacred relics of the Caliph of Caph, to the last of our blood though the world burn around us. And we did.” Her voice broke into a sob. “We did!” Kivaan’s temper evaporated as quickly as it came. “You did,” he assured the stricken girl before him, reaching to cradle her in his arms. “I know you did. And you are not a mere slave, not a mere anything. I spoke wrongly. I am not worthy to speak to you at all.” Ohanna looked up sharply, catching the boy’s face in her hands. “Listen to me!” she said fiercely. “I am a slave, yes, and a daughter of a fallen House. But whatever I am I am of Caph, and I know my rights and privileges by ancient custom! I know my rights of the Caliph.” Kivaan swallowed hard. “I demand,” Ohanna said, “I demand the protection of my Caliph for my people and myself. I demand justice. I demand honour. I demand my Caliph’s service to his last breath, his dying blood, to uphold the duties I deserve of him. That is my right. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?” “Yes,” admitted Kivaan. “It’s your right.” “Well then,” Ohanna told him, “that’s what I demand then. I demand you take your hands off Gaath’s sword. That’s for my family to keep safe until you call for it – and not to gut yourself with like a coward. I demand you survive. I demand you take your sorrows and your griefs and use even them to grow and become strong. I demand you escape and prepare so that you will come back and destroy our enemies, restore us to our freedoms. That’s what you have to do, Kivaan of Caph. That’s what I demand that you do.” For a moment the two young people stared at each other, appalled by the intensity of the moment. “Then I’ll do it,” Prince Kivaan answered at last. “Since you asked so nicely.” “It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.” Voltaire “May I enter?” the stranger they called Voltaire asked, tapping on the frame beside the beaded curtain to Shazana Pel’s sleeping space. “Why?” demanded the pigeonwarrior with a grunt. “I suppose so.” The stranger brushed through the beads and found the Thannagarian stripped to the waist, wrestling with a makeshift bandage for the wounds on her shoulder. “I thought you’d require assistance with those knots,” he pointed out. “And also it is customary to remove all the shrapnel before binding the injury.” “I can’t get all the bits out,” Pel answered. “I can’t reach them.” The stranger knelt behind her and peeled the bloody bandage away from the lacerated shoulder. “You could always have sought some help,” he pointed out, washing his fingers in a saline bowl before searching the wounds. Shazana Pel winced but didn’t cry out. “I do not seek help,” she replied through gritted teeth. “I am alone.” “You have certainly learned to reserve your trust. But now you will have to trust me as I prise these fragments from your shoulder. It will be painful, so you’ll enjoy it.” Pel closed her fists on her mace’s hit and squeezed as nimble fingers pressed into her torn flesh. “I do not enjoy pain.” “Indeed? I suggest that you have embraced it as you would a lover, Shazana Pel. When pain is all you have left, then pain is what you rely on to tell you that you yet live.” “I don’t trust you, Voltaire!” “Very wise. And yet here I am at your back with your own knife, cutting your skin, and you do not shy away.” “I need the shrapnel removing. That’s all.” “That’s right. Before you can heal you need to get rid of the fragment that have wounded you, the things you carry with you that keep you from becoming whole again.” The soft pad of bandaged was strapped into place so Pel turned round to glare at her medic. “And that’s you, is it? You’re here to heal me so I’m whole?” She smoothed her hands over her full breasts. “That’s why you called on me tonight, is it?” she asked cynically. “No. I called tonight to make love to you,” Voltaire told her. “Assuming you won’t insist I defeat you in combat first.” Pel snorted. “You’re bold with words,” she admitted, “but I am no easy conquest.” “So conquest is possible?” her visitor noted. “Or shall I go now?” “You can stay for a while, Voltaire,” Shazana Pel decided. “To talk.” “Then let us converse,” the stranger said, reaching out for her. “Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.” Voltaire Kivaan awoke as Ohanna slipped from his arms and padded off to prepare his breakfast. There was already somebody else moving out in the main chamber. He reached for the Honour Blade of Gaath but it was gone. It was not yet time for him to possess all the treasures of Caph. “Ohanna?” he called. The girl turned. “Sorry, my lord,” she apologised, flushing. “I haven’t yet been trained how to slip from a man’s bed without waking him. I didn’t mean to…” “It’s alright. We should be up and making our plans.” He looked over at the girl no older than himself with a strange wonder. “Thank you for last night.” Ohanna flushed a deeper green. “We didn’t do anything,” she said. “What you did for me was more important than any pleasure slave might have,” Kivaan told her. “You made me a man in a far greater sense of the word. I’ll try and live up to it.” “I’ll see that you do.” Kivaan took her hand and together they went into the main chamber. The gaunt alien was already up poring over charts and maps spread out on the central table. “Where’s Shazana Pel, Lord Voltaire?” Prince Kivaan wondered. “She slept late,” the stranger answered. “She had a long night.” “I’m here,” the pigeonwoman declared, entering the room strapping on her wings. She glared at the man looking over the plans and added, “I am ready for anything.” “Splendid,” he replied. “Well then, we’d best decide what our strategy should be. Prince Kivaan, what are your intentions now?” The Caliph didn’t seem disconcerted by the question. “I intend to escape Caph, seek allies, prepare my resources, then return to liberate my planet and restore good order, saving my people and bringing justice to those who have harmed them.” “Good answer,” admitted Pel. “I believe it is,” agreed Voltaire. “Might I additionally suggest that you should cripple the Thonnagarians’ capacity to subjugate your people, deny them the main objective of their invasion, ensure that your subjects are aware of your survival and intentions, and send a message to Ancient Shadara that the conquest of Caph is not without cost?” “You might,” Kivaan agreed. “But how?” “What is the Thonnagarians’ main objective?” Ohanna wondered. “I thought they just sought to enslave us all to their vile lusts?” “Transmundium,” Shazana Pel snorted. “The rare element used for transwarp engines and transnuclear weaponry. There are deposits of it deep under your planet’s mantle, and some minor surface traces. If my people are to restore their empire they’ll need such materiel.” “And of course the Thonnagarian’s sacred Z-Alloy includes an isotope of transmundium,” Voltaire added. “Since all known deposits of Z-Alloy were destroyed with Pigeonworld, the Thonnagarians are desperate to find a way of artificially creating their gravity-folding miracle metal.” “How could you know that?” gasped Pel. “Who are you?” “I was sent to you by a friend of yours, the Librarian of the Lunar Public Library.” “Bookman!” hissed the pigeonwoman. “I told him not to involve the heroes of Earth.” “Not did he,” agreed the stranger. “I am not a hero of Earth. Now the primary cache of transmundium on Caph is stored in the imperial treasury, which the Thonnagarians will have been seeking to breech all night. I imagine they’ll be breaking through in an hour or two. These tunnels run there, of course, and they also connect to the transmission towers that are blocking your vessel’s communications.” “You are suggesting we destroy the towers then steal the transmundium from under Ancient Shadara’s nose?” Pel asked. “I like it.” “I am suggesting that we retune the towers to broadcast live what the Caliph is doing,” replied the stranger. “I suggest that all of Caph should see Kivaan battle the Thonnagarians in the imperial treasury, and watch him escape unscathed to seek allies and one day return to liberate his people.” “That would be wonderful!” Ohanna admitted. “It would fuel a counter-rebellion, make every House resist the invaders!” “The first rebellion died when the Pigeonwarriors used the over-ride codes in the weapons they had supplied the rebels,” the man they were calling Voltaire explained. “The resistance movement will be much better organised, I trust.” “I’ll do my best,” the Caliph of Caph promised. “Won’t such an attack be suicide?” Shazana Pel pointed out, although not in tones that suggested she was against the venture. “Josdir Vak is supervising the treasury mission,” the stranger pointed out. Shazana Pel hefted her mace. “Then let us begin.” “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire The city was still burning, its minarets and turrets shattered, its elegant houses scorched and desolate. There were few people on the street this morning, only a few frightened slaves hurrying on their errands. The great marketplace was a charred desolation, and the bodies of the shoppers lay twisted where they had fallen beside the crushed rebels. A mournful desert wind covered everything with a layer of dull white sand. The Thonnagarian warships hovered over the capitol, their anti-gravity weapons focussed on the captured city. Travel was forbidden while the new masters of Caph made good their conquest. There were less than twenty thousand Thonnagarians left alive, so it would take some time to secure their new homeworld. “It will be the work of years,” Ancient Shadara told the Eyrie Council. “This primitive world is rich in natural resources and has a docile slave workforce, but it will require much modification before it feels like home to us. The terraforming and weather control will be laborious and lengthy, for example.” “Still, it is a beginning,” Josdir Vak proclaimed. “The resistance to our rule had been quashed, and our soldiers are discovering that one of the natural resources of this planet is that the population is naturally eighty percent female,” he smirked. Ancient Shadara was not impressed. “You think to weaken our lineage with a generation of puce bastards? If only you were so diligent at battle as you were at slaughtering suspected enemies of the state. Or have you captured Shazana Pel and failed to report your victory?” Vak shifted uneasily. “Pel has gone to ground. She is only one traitor…” “She is one of the finest pigeonwarriors ever fledged, and no matter how low she may have fallen and how debased she has become she is more dangerous to us than a thousand noblemen of Caph. She knows us and our technology, how we fight, how we think. She knows you, Josdir Vak, even as I know you for your strengths and failings. And you have not caught her.” “There are many ancient tunnels running beneath the city from feudal days, your excellency,” Prince Aarmus of Aarixus pointed out. The acting Caliph was the only Caphan present at the council of war except for Kriige, the personal slave who stood behind his chair. “Some of the passageways are shielded from detection, reinforced against assault. If your renegade has taken the boy to one of those places it will require a through physical search.” He glanced at the commanded of the First Thonnagarian Attack Force. “And I don’t think you have the personnel to spare right now.” “You wish us to authorise your personal army to go onto the streets,” Ancient Shadara surmised. “Thus in the name of the new regime you can send your troops to enter the houses of your enemies, pay back old scores by committing what atrocities you wish, and destroy any opposition to your new role as the leader of your conquered people.” The wrinkled old pigeonwoman considered this for a moment. “Very well. You may. But don’t forget to search the actual tunnels as well. Wherever your men die, that is where Shazara Pel will be found.” “My own troops would have located the zhonga-kha eventually,” Josdir Vak argued sulkily. “Your task is to breech the imperial treasury and secure the deposits of transmundium therein,” Ancient Shadara snapped. “Without letting some feeble fanatic destroy the facility as you did with the Hall of Artefacts.” “My men are already working on cutting through the doors,” Vak assured the leader of his people. “They will be in there before noon. Then it will be a simple matter to…” The Caliph’s palace shook as the Thonnagarian Heavy Cruiser hovering overhead exploded in a ball of dirty fire. “Nothing is simple,” Ancient Shadara snapped at him. “What was that?” “It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.” Voltaire “That was very clever,” Shadara Pel admitted. “I do not think that anyone has ever used a communications tower to transmit a gravity pulse along a data tightbeam to over-ride gravitic phase engines before.” “There’s always a first time,” the man they called Voltaire smiled thinly. “Given our capture of this facility, your own knowledge and abilities regarding manipulation of Z-Alloy, and the proximity of the Thonnagarian destroyer it seemed a suitable distraction ploy to attempt.” “We got them!” Prince Kivaan exalted. “I don’t believe we actually got them! We’re fighting back!” “Every warship around this planet will have gone to full alert after this,” Pel warned. “They’ll analyse what we did and make sure it can never happen again.” “Good. That should keep them busy,” Voltaire grinned wolfishly. He seemed to be enjoying the adventure. “I imagine some people will wish to come and inspect what has happened in the communications tower. Have you instructed the systems here to do what we require?” Pel placed the final code cards into the right slots. Caphans didn’t make too much use of advanced technology in their every day lives, but it was available to them when they wished it. The slaves on this transmission tower had been more than willing to help with the technical work once they had been captured from their new masters after a short and bloody exchange. “Almost done,” the rogue pigeonwarrior reported. “But I’m getting an authorisation block. I can’t get the tower to transmit these orders automatically to the other communication facilities.” “That’s because there’s a safeguard,” the young Caliph told her. “But I can over-ride it.” He stepped forward and laid his hand upon the recognition plate, and the previously stubborn systems became suddenly very deferential. “Enact!” he commanded the tower. Ohanna raced back up the stairs to join them in the control bole. “People are coming!” she warned. “Some pigeonmen flying up at us, and some others on the ground, coming up the stairs.” “Excellent,” Voltaire noted. “Time for our next trick, then. Pel, are you ready?” “This isn’t a standard manoeuvre,” the warrioress warned. “I’d be disappointed if it was. Prince Kivaan, kindly lock the tower in communication with the incoming soldiers.” “Done,” called the Caliph. “Now Pel, be so kind as to take command of the Z-Alloy your former comrades are wearing and request it to go somewhere else, would you?” “This is a technique we usually use to bring wounded warriors out of the battle,” Pel warned. “These Thonngarians are awake and alert, and they are in physical contact with their armbands.” “Indeed. Ohanna, your loudest scream over the communications net, if you would. That should fatally distract our adversaries while Pel sends a sudden command to their Z-Alloy harnesses. Proceed.” The plan unfolded. A score of pigeonwarriors were swatted from the skies. Pel whooped her triumph, her wings spreading wide as she celebrated the destruction of her foes. “And now the next phase,” Voltaire suggested wryly. “They only live who dare.” Voltaire “I do not care how many warriors you have to pull from other duties, idiot kva’kron,” Josdir Vak shouted over his helmet communicator. “You find some of the technicians on this miserable world and you find out what happened at that comms tower. You discover how Shazana Pel has managed to take down the entire jamming net. You find out how she over-rode a whole fledging of trained troopers and smeared them across the city. And you find where that zhonga-kha is now. I want her dead if I have to transnuke the whole capital.” The commander of the invasion forces was distracted in mid tirade by a report form his wing-lieutenant. “Sir, we’ve got through the treasury door. There are some laser grid defences beyond, but nothing we can’t cope with in a few moments.” “I’m sure the Caphans thought they were being very clever when they fitted their imperial vault,” Vak sneered. “They are an inferior race, and they deserve their slow lingering deaths as our conquered prey.” “Conquest?” Shazana Pel said quietly. “This was not conquest. This was treachery. There is no honour for the Thonnagarians here.” As the wing-lieutenant span round Kivaan caught him in the chest with a well-aimed laser blast. Small arms hunting was the sport of the nobility. The workforce around the treasure door began to realise that something was amiss. Ohanna hurled in the screamer drone that the Caphans reserved for putting down rebellious slaves. “For my House!” she shouted savagely as the tight sonic bubble wiped out Thonnagarian and collaborator alike. She pulled her personal honour dagger and looked for more enemies. Josdir Vak turned on Pel and slowly drew forth his double-headed war axe, his weapon of choice. Like all the pigeonwarrior elite he was trained in focussing the Z-alloy’s gravity manipulations to empower his blade. “Shazana Pel. So you came out of hiding at last. Did you want to beg me for more of what I gave you at our last meeting?” “You do not have thirty of your friends to hold me down this time, Vak,” the pigeonwoman warned him. “Nor am I shattered by my exile, confused by the loss of my mate, or my mission’s failure, or my torture in enemy hands. I am not an easy prey, Josdir Vak, and if you want a conquest then you will have to prove a better warrior than I rate you, little man.” While Pel and Vak circled, Kivaan grabbed Ohanna by the hand and they raced through the broken treasury door. A small hovering silver video orb followed them, tracking the Caliph’s movements. And all of Caph watched what it broadcast. “Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.” Voltaire “Something is wrong!” Prince Aarmus cried out, racing back to the chamber formerly used by the Emirate Council. “Ancient Shadara, your eminence…!” The soldiers roughly stopped the collaborator at the door, but the leader of the Thonnagarians gestured for them to let him through. “What is this noise, Aarmus?” she demanded. “Check the transmission bands!” the Prince shouted. “Not just the tower you’re investigating, all of them. Look!” Shadara made an imperious gesture and one of her retainers quickly found a tuner. The images in the orb were quite clear. Prince Kivaan and some Caphan slave girl were in the treasury, packaging the small sealed containers of transmundium into a satchel. Half a dozen pigeonwarriors lay fallen around them. “What?” Ancient Shadara spat. “What is this?” “This is resistance, madam,” the stranger in the shadows announced, stepping out into the light. “Any good plan would have recognised its likelihood.” Prince Aarmus frowned and stepped back from the unexpected arrival, but Ancient Shadara was wise and knew her foe. “But who would have anticipated interference from… the Hooded Hood?” The cowled crime czar made a small nod of acknowledgement. “Indeed, madam. However, I did find it ridiculously easy to thwart your plans with only two children and an outcast warrior. You may wish to consider what that says about the quality of your lieutenants.” “Indeed,” agreed Ancient Shadara coldly. “I will be speaking to Josdir Vak about it at some length. The Hood glanced at the videocast in the orb, where the drone was now showing Shazara Pel battling her hated foe. “I think not,” the archvillain noted. “In any case, I have called to inform you that your conquest of Caph XI does not suit my plans, and I intend to set in motion events which will make your stay here brief and unpleasant. I thought it appropriate to give you the opportunity to withdraw in good order, although I do not expect you to accept my kindness.” Prince Aarmus watched in fascinated horror. There were a dozen armed pigeonwarriors in the room yet not one of them had dared to raise his weapon; such was the compelling aura the stranger radiated that it seemed impossible that anyone should attack him. “You arranged for the boy-Caliph to be saved,” Shadara surmised. “I arranged for certain information to come to Pel’s notice,” the Hood admitted. “I had previously ensured that she would be available to assist in my plans, although you and your warriors are as much to blame for that as I.” The cowled crime czar’s face tightened into a glower. “You pigeonpeople have poor understanding of worth, or where honour lies.” Ancient Shadara was the first to break out of the spell. “Well, your threats have been most amusing, terran, but we have more important things to do. Kill him!” But the Hooded Hood was gone. “Nature has always had more force than education. Voltaire The reinforced vault was all that protected Prince Kivaan and Ohanna from the brutal gravity waves that spilled over the forecourt beyond where Pel and Vak clashed. “What are they doing?” Kiivas’ daughter worried. “Pel will be killed!” “It is a blood match,” Kivaan judged. “A matter of honour. I think Josdir Vak has dishonoured Pel before, and now she seeks vengeance.” “She has no champion to fight for her,” Ohanna said, then considered her words. “Pel is a woman, yet she needs no champion. She is strong.” The vault trembled slightly as another supporting wall on the building outside collapsed. “She is strong,” Kivaan agreed. “It is something for us both to think on. In the ballads it is always the master who saves the slave, but yesterday the Caliph of Caph was saved by two brave women.” “Two?” Ohanna puzzled. “Who was… ohhh.” A bright green flush suffused her cheeks. The treasure house shook again. “I think we’d better get out of here while we still can,” Kivaan judged. His hand closed around Ohanna’s again, their fingers entwined. “Ready?” Now the slave girl had to be brave to match up to the person her Caliph saw when he looked at her. “Of course,” she agreed. “Let’s go!” “Your destiny is that of a man, and your vows those of a god.” Voltaire Josdir Vak flicked a wing over and twisted round in mid air to catch Pel’s leg and snap it in two. The warrioress anticipated the movement and dropped away just in time, but that lined her up for another blow from Vak’s axe. She caught the blade with the haft of her mace and pulsed her enemy away to catch her breath for a moment. Vak tumbled down but swung around on the offensive, hurling a handful of darts that flew in with eight-G force. Pel empowered her wings with the Z-alloy and wrapped them before her to catch the shrapnel. Her enemy had anticipated that and used the time to bring down the floors above her with a well placed axe-slice. Pel didn’t try to avoid the falling building as Vak had expected. Instead she folded her wings and powered right through it, relying on a gravity spike to shatter the stones as they fell. Then she spread her feathers wide and power-dived back down at her foe. “You’re getting tired, Pel,” Josdir Vak crowed. “I can feel it with every blow, less powerful than the last. Your only hope was to defeat me quickly, and now you have failed.” “It must be nice in your imagination, Vak,” Pel sneered. “Where you are a great warrior, not a pitiful laughing stock of a preening parrot. Where you win battles by might of arms rather than by pitiful treachery. But this is real life.” Their weapons clashed, locked together as their wielders willed their gravitic forces at the other. “Pray you die in this battle, Pel. If you live I shall slice your muscles and leave you a helpless cripple, stretched out naked in the marketplace for any who want to take their amusement of you!” “Pray you die, Vak, for when I am done you will only be good to play the woman also!” The warriors wrath gave fuel to their Z-alloy, and the song of destruction the metal sang reached a crescendo. Vak’s face suddenly changed, his confident expression altering to determination, then disbelief. Shazana Pel screamed her rage as her gravity pulse flayed the very flesh off her opponent’s bones, sending a gristly pulped skeleton to scatter on the opposite wall. Shazana Pel dropped to the floor like a wounded bird; but Ohanna and Kivaan were there to catch her. And then the Hooded Hood swept her up in his arms and bore her gently from the field of battle. “Victory is yours, warrior,” he assured the stunned pigeonwoman. “Now rest safe. No harm shall befall you.” Exhausted Pel struggled for a moment, but she was very weary. Everyone has to trust sometime. “Voltaire, what do we do now?” Prince Kivaan wondered. Outside came the hammer of more soldiers arriving to continue the fight. “Say what you would to your people, Caliph of Caph,” he instructed Kivaan. “Shadara has taken personal charge of the situation now. It is time to go.” The boy-Caliph turned to the transmission drone. “My people,” he began. “This is not the end. We are not defeated. We have not surrendered. We are not lost. Wounded, perhaps, betrayed by treachery, besieged; but not finished.” The Hood nodded approvingly. Kivaan suddebly turned to his companion and pulled her forward. “This is Ohanna of Raael, Prince Kiivas’ daughter out of Ekooria of Damaar. She has demanded of me the ancient rights of a slave of Caph: the protection of her Caliph for her people and herself. Justice. Honour. Her Caliph’s service to his last breath, his dying blood, to uphold the duties she deserves of him.” Ohoona stood stunned in the spotlight of history. “That is her right,” Kivaan said fiercely. “That is the right of each of you. I know you have not always recived those rights. I know our world has not been perfect. I know that I have been a callow boy surrounded by luxury and sycophantic self-serving advisors. But all that will change. I am your lord, and I will do what is right, and I will return to lead you into a new day of joy and peace for Caph such as we have never known. Not as things were, but as things should be. This is my blood oath. Hold it in your hearts.” “Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.” Voltaire “You are the Hooded Hood,” Shazana Pel said as the Galactibus span away from Cassiopeia, outdistancing the angry Thonnagarian warships with contemptuous ease. “Indeed.” “You were amongst those gathered at Sir Mumphrey Wilton's solstice feast. I have heard the warriors of Earth speak of you. You are a villain.” “I trust I am an archvillain, Pel. I would be disappointed to be a common villain.” The pigeonwarrior looked into those deep green eyes with a face that showed more vulnerability than she might have wished. “I trusted you.” “I have not betrayed your trust.” “We were partners in adventure. We were caught in the moment – when we joined.” “I do not regret the adventure,” the Hooded Hood told Shazana Pel. “Do you?” The woman searched her heart. “No,” she confessed. “It was a good adventure.” The Hooded Hood raised her chin so her lips were turned up to his. “Are you ready for another?” he challenged her. “It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.” Voltaire “How can I repay you?” the Caliph of Caph asked the cowled crime czar. “Pel says you are deemed an evil man, yet I have seen you do only what is good, brave and just…” “I’m complicated,” answered the Hooded Hood. “As for a reward, there is one thing you can do…” “It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.” Voltaire The Galactibus cloaked itself before landing amidst the ruins. The locals here were nervous about offworlders these days, even if the pirate raids had mostly been curtailed. “Where are we, master?” Ohanna asked with trepidation as she peered beyond the hatch at the desolate broken houses and scorched ground. “A place where you and the Prince will not be found by your enemies, until you desire it,” answered the Hooded Hood. “We are to dwell in this place, Lord Hood?” the slave girl asked. “You are to dwell here, Ohanna. It is my wish for now that you remain as Prince Kivaan’s companion, to keep him safe and remind him of his duties. Kivaan will need your help in the days to come.” “I don’t want to hide,” Kivaan objected. “I need somewhere that I can make connections, forge alliances. I need somewhere I can learn the skills of a warlord and grow in competence so I can return to Caph and make good my promises.” “That is why you are here,” the Hood said, leading the young people amongst the dark ruins beneath the nebula-bright sky. “You will need many allies and resources in the days to come, but here is the first of them, and here you must stay while you learn how to fight and how to care for a people.” And now as they approached the camp fire they were noticed. “Who goes there?” a Plyxtrazarian watchman called. Then another, more commanding voice demanded “Who is it? What do you want?” “Vaahir of Viigo, it is your Caliph who calls on you,” the Hooded Hood replied. “He commands your service to his House as warlord and counsellor, and he calls on you by right for sanctuary and service.” Kivaan and Ohoona’s eyes went wide. “Vaahir of Viigo!” they both exclaimed together. The war to free Caph had begun. “God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.” Voltaire And Next Time in Untold Tales: Yuki’s psychological ploy backfires. Donar faces a theological dilemma. And like it says in the story title: Untold Tales of the Parodyverse: Nitz Must Die! OR A tour of the international underworld of the Parodyverse, with more spies, lies, plots, and counterplots than you can shake a Tom Clancy at. A who's who of major villains and a who's who of major heroes clash with a few unexpected results. And Hatman and the Shoggoth got to Candia. That's in Untold Undercover Tales of the Lair Legion: Plots and Ruses. Each one spins off a whole story arc. So which do we go for? The Shazara Pel Questpage The Hooded Hood – a Writer’s Guide and History The Caphan Story Archive Untold Tales of the Tenth Caphan The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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