Beast

Chapter 1

Orlok

Sun dapples the wizened skin of the elderly Alzhon’s sneering face. She stands boldly in my path, arms akimbo. My Centurion, Rax, moves to smite her out of our way. I stay his hand with a glance.

“You,” she sputters, thin body trembling with rage. “I’m told you’re the one in charge now.”

“You were told correctly. I am Primus Orlock. And you are…?”

“Magdala’s the name. My friends call my Aunt Maggie. You can call me Magdala.”

Rax tilts his spur crowned head to the side, clearly perplexed by this venerable female’s boldness. Wearing simple tan garments stained with juice from the Zalmaberry fruit, which she is tasked to harvest --and barefoot in the dirt trail-- Magdala appears every bit a hardscrabble farmer. The D’jal wind stirs the fields of brightly colored wildflowers flanking our path, undulating the petals like ocean waves. A burst of their sweet fragrance reaches my nostrils and makes my heart soar. Perhaps I’ll write a song about it later.

“And with what do you believe I can provide you, Magdala?” I ask, not without respect. Ruling a conquered world can be done in a number of different ways. One can be brutal and harsh with discipline, punishing every slight both real or imagined. Or one can bend before strong breezes as these flowers do, only to spring back tall and proud once the storm passes.

“More food? Better accommodations than your neighbors? Or perhaps you’d like to join our Conscripts in the D’jal Defense Garrison?”

The last bit was meant in jest, though with how fearsome this female’s gaze is I would think twice before testing her mettle.

“Bah, I have plenty of food, and my hut’s no better or worse than when the damnable Helios Combine taxed us into poverty. As for joining your stinking army-- these hands are stained with enough blood as it is.”

Rax tilts his head back and laughs, rounded belly shaking with mirth.

“I like her.” That’s more than I’ve heard Rax say in a week. “Were she not so venerable, I would take her as a mate. I still might.”

“Try it and I’ll fertilize my cannis root with your ballsack,” she growls, brandishing a hoe.

“What is it I can do for you again, Magdala?”

She squints in the bright dual D’jal suns, sizing me up with eyes still sharp and cunning despite her years.

“You can stop parking your damned starships right next to the Zalma blossoms. They should have bloomed two days ago, but the filthy exhaust from your ships has poisoned them.”

“How dare you accuse—”

“Rax, go on ahead to the fortress without me. I will be along shortly.”

He closes his jaw, muttering through gritted teeth, but he departs nonetheless. I turn to the feisty old woman and arch my brows. “I was not aware our ships would have a deleterious effect on your crops. Clearly, the Empire has no wish for her newest citizens to starve. I will find a new landing pad immediately upon my return to the fortress.”

“You will?” she blinks several times. I do not think she expected victory so easily. Her anger quickly twists her pink skin again, however. “Well, that’s good and all, but this crop of Zalmaberry plants won’t mature. There will be nothing for us to give your Emperor in tribute.”

“Our Emperor,” I correct gently. “And do not be so hasty. Take me to your fields.”

She gripes under her breath, turning her back on me and moving carefully through the wildflower fields, poking with a stick. My holes lie hidden beneath the flowing grasses and flowering plants, dug by a native rodent many consider to make good house pets. Not to mention D’jal blade snakes, thin bodied venomous serpents who viciously bite any foolish enough to step upon their scaly hides.

“See?” she says, brandishing her hoe like a conductor’s baton at the ten-foot-tall blue stalks of the Zalma plants. The white-pink blossoms remain closed, appearing almost like the heads of serpents as they wave in the stiff breeze. “No bloom, no harvest, no tribute.”

“Indeed. Bide a moment, I’ll see if I can’t coax them into a bloom.”

“With what, your good looks?” she snaps.

I clear my mind, getting in tune with The Pulse, the intergalactic hum of which most sapient species are incapable of perceiving. It flows through me, comprises me, as it comprises everything. All existence, all matter and energy, all thought and all action, are all part of The Pulse. If one knows the right vibrations, one can change the tune for better or worse. In this case, I hope for better.

Inhaling deeply, filling my lungs with sweet nectar-tinged air, I flow into the Lifesong. Magdala gasps, taking a step back, overwhelmed by the power of my voice. It’s true that no Reaper can match the strength of a Duun Kingdom song. That is no conceit, simply a fact.

I sing to the blossoms, sing through them, deep into their roots. The Song blasts away the bits of polluted mire clinging to their tiny ventricles, allowing the water and nutrient flow to resume. Coaxing, gentle but insistent, I encourage the flow to move with swiftness far greater than found in nature alone. Magdala falls to her rump on the dirt, eyes wide as the twin suns overhead as she beholds the blossoms unfurl into full, lush bloom.

“I don’t believe it,” she gasps. “Are you a sorcerer?”

“No. I am a Soulsinger,” I say. We now stand in the shade, shielded from the harsh sun by the unfolded petals. “I will away to the fortress at once, so I may find a new place to land our…”

A dissonant chime cuts me off. Grunting at the interruption, I reach onto my belt. I pull my compad out of my belt pouch, bringing it before my face. A holo image of Rax appears, his face drawn with worry.

“Primus, the rebel forces have launched an attack on our water reclamation plant.”

My face twists into a grin. Though my voice has given life this day, my hands will deal out death.

“On my way. Leave some of them to quench my bloodlust, will you? It has been too long since I’ve seen battle.”

Life, death, rebirth. The cycle continues.

I leave Magdala to her own devices and rush toward the nearby airfield. While I intend to move it to a more suitable location, its proximity is ideal for my current purpose.

“Primus approaching,” snaps a Legionnaire from the Bukilose clan as I come trotting up. His fellows stiffen and salute at my approach. “Prepare a transport for him, quickly.”

He turns to me, squinting in the bright sun. His clan comes from the deep seas of Kurse. The Legionnaire must feel quite out of place here on the grassy savannah of D’Jal’s northwestern continent.

“Will you be needing a pilot, my Primus?”

“No,” I say. “Look alive, the rebel attack on the treatment plant could be part of a general insurrection.”

He grins with a mouth full of sharp teeth. “We know how to deal with uppity Conscripts.”

I follow his gaze to the blood streaked form of a naked human male strung up by his ankles in front of a thruster array on a shuttle. When the shuttle fires up its engines, he will be immolated. The bloody prisoner opens the one eye remaining to him and stares at me through a haze of pain.

I pay him no heed and leap onto a hover sled. A former piece of farm equipment, it lacks weaponry but sturdy enough to bear my weight. I open up the throttle fully and tear away from the airfield.

The sled climbs into the air, allowing me a view of the farmland surrounding the manor of the former D’Jal Governor. The landscape spreads out like a cloak before our fleet sled. Serpentine roads cut through square fields of myriad color. In the center, the manor-turned-fortress looms like the obelisk at the center of a sundial. We erected walls about the original structure, fortifying it with heavy gamma ray cannons capable of making mincemeat of any unauthorized ships daring to enter D’jal’s orbit.

Certain of the necessity, Emperor Brama installed fortifications all over the plains. The Helios Combine struck back hard against the Empire of late. Most of our fleet remains mired in other systems. Unfortunately, we don’t have total coverage. It would be quite possible for an enemy force to land on the southern part of this continent and deploy ground troops.

I simply don’t have enough manpower to protect D’jal fully. Fortunately, most of the Combine fleet is otherwise engaged, and most of my problems come from a small --but stubborn-- group of Rebels who refuse to capitulate the planet to the Empire.

Instead of steering toward the manor/fortress, I turn toward the North, where a glittering, salty sea shimmers in the bright sunlight. The natives call this body of water the Desolation, because the salt content is so high nothing can live in it with the exception of inedible kelp and equally inedible crustaceans.

The Combine had built a desalination plant on the Desolation’s rocky coast, since water remains scarce in this dry environment. We took over the plant and worked to expand it. The plant appears as a series of blocks rearing up from the landscape, connected by large pipes. I can see a trail of smoke working its way up into the blue sky. Random flashes of energy weapons fire cluster about the edge nearest the sea.

I set the hover sled down near my amassed Legion, standing in orderly rows behind shimmering blue shields created by turtle shell-like portable generators. Rax salutes as I approach, his countenance grim.

“Report.”

“A small band of rebels infiltrated the desalination plant, Primus.” He gestures at the closest of the block-like structures, where our shield harmlessly reflects the green and white weapons fire streaking toward us. “They are firmly entrenched, as you can see.”

I grunt in understanding. “Why do the fools waste their ammunition firing upon our shield? Surely they know nothing short of artillery can’t penetrate.”

Something’s not right. My instincts tell me there’s more to this than meets the eye.

“We could bring in our own artillery, Primus,” Rax says. “Or perhaps a Cruiser?”

“Are you daft?” I glare at him until he blanches. “That would slaughter the rebels, but it would also damage the facility. We must have potable water, both for our consumption and for the crops. The rebels likely know that.”

“What do you think they’re planning?”

“They could be planting charges to destroy the plant.” I shrug. “It doesn’t matter. We will move in and give them the battle they so desperately crave.”

Rax grins, and turns to give the order, but I catch him by the shoulder.

“I will lead the charge,” I growl. “Bad Moon thirsts on this hot day.”

“As you will, Primus.” He eyes the double-bladed ax strapped to my back. Part melee weapon, part repeating energy rifle, I had my custom weapon designed by an enslaved Alzhon technician on Kurse. The crescent blades of my ax has tasted the blood of many foes.

“Shield bearers, move forward,” I bellow. “These fools seek to test our mettle. We shall not be found wanting.”

One of my own clan, a Duun, raises a horn to his lips and blows, cheeks billowing. A harsh blare echoes over the savannah. The Legion marches.

When we’re within a dozen yards of the Rebel position, I move through the shield with a grunt of effort and lead my shock troops in a frontal assault. Energy beams sear the air all around us, some of them striking home. None of my men go down, not even the injured. A green ray sizzles close enough to my thigh to bubble and sear the flesh, but I don’t slow down in the least.

A little pain is a great motivator.

I leap up the ten-foot-high wall surrounding the plant, landing on the top. A rebel swings his rifle toward me, but I disarm him. Literally. I chop off his arms at the elbow with a single fell swoop of Bad Moon.

All around me, my fellow Reapers leap howling to the attack. Fewer than two dozen rebels fought on the other side of the wall. What they lack in numbers they make up for in weaponry. Their energy rifles look high grade --probably AMD manufacture.

It won’t help them. Not one bit.

I flip Bad Moon around in my grip, converting it to rifle mode. Squeezing the trigger stud sends a foot wide blue beam rippling through their ranks. The flesh disruptor doesn’t damage the structure, but it turns any rebel it touches into a screaming mound of bubbled tumorous flesh falling from pristine, undamaged skeletons.

The Ataxians and the Alliance ban such weaponry, but the Combine uses them on us. I have no qualms about returning the favor.

“Run!” bellows a sharp, confident female voice above the din. “Back to the sub!”

I identify the speaker, a tall—for a human—red-tressed woman covered head to toe in sleek Class Two hard armor. Her face remains obscured behind a face plate. I feel oddly drawn toward her, like the tug of an invisible band growing taut between us.

Obviously this woman is the raid’s leader. I drop to the other side of the wall and swing Bad Moon through an Alzhon male foolish enough to try and impede my progress. Blood drips from my dual blades as I advance on the woman.

She shoulders her plasma rifle and whips out a hexagonal trimantium staff. The leader puts it through a series of whirling motions meant to distract me before she launches into an attack. Bold of her to bring the fight to one of us.

I parry her strike with Bad Moon’s haft, but, quick as lightning, she reverses the motion and sweeps me behind the knees. To my surprise, I go down hard onto my back.

She doesn’t press the attack. Instead, she turns to flee. Agile as a jungle cat, she leaps over a thick pipe and disappears into the treatment plant complex.

“After them,” I bellow, rising to my feet. “Don’t let a single rebel escape.”

That they planned their retreat well soon becomes obvious. We don’t catch a single one of them. By the time I reach the Desolate Sea’s coast, all I can see of the rebels is the ripple of their submersible diving deep below the waves.

“Primus,” Rax bellows into my ear. I tap the com headset and growl.

“What now?”

“Sir, the attack on the plant was just a ruse. A much larger force just liberated the labor camp on the eastern edge of the plantation.”

I bellow in rage, thrusting my ax into the dirt and shaking my fist in defiance at the fleeing sub.

“You will rue the day you crossed Orlok of the Duun Kingdom, wench!”

No matter what it takes, I will track her down…

And rip her still-beating heart from her breast.