Chapter Nine
Zayri carefully slid the small mirror into place as she scarcely dared to even breathe. The little red beam of light hit the mirror and adjusting it she aimed the refracted beam of light at the beam on the wall opposite her.
The red lights lined up and the far beam of light sizzled briefly before going out. She removed the mirror carefully and the beam before her went back to its corridor of protection, even as ten of her crew slid down the wall she’d just cleared of the opposing proximity sensor.
Going on she made her way to the entryway of the compound and waited. Two jackal guards stood in opposition of her and she felt a shiver of apprehension course through her.
As a woman she knew only too well what her fate would be if she was caught by such merciless creatures. They took no pity on human women, but rather they took great delight in causing them pain and humiliation.
Boldly she stood up and approached the open entryway of the palace compound as she let her hips roll in as erotic of a sway of movement as she could muster. The fake smile of invitation she had plastered to her face was the hardest of all to maintain.
The jackal guards had noticed her immediately and leveled off the staffs in their hands at her in preparation of blasting her into particles of matter, but now they stood slack canine jawed as they watched her approach.
The jackal guards never saw the figures that approached from behind that sliced their throats wide-open before ramming home the blades into their sides repeatedly. With hybrids such as these it was wise to inflict maximum damage as they were known for their recuperative powers of regeneration. Inflict enough damage though and they couldn’t survive for long enough in order to recover.
Zayri slipped past the pair of fallen jackals as her two accomplices fell into line behind her. Here and there the body of a dead guard whether full blood jackal man or hybridized human lay in a puddle of their own blood. For the moment the primary palace compound appeared to be within her control.
Judging from the buildings in the gloomy darkness it was hard to say what lay within them. Over the course of the next hour a discovery process ensued.
*****
Most of the buildings were unoccupied and useless to them. A lot of them were labs that had screens full of live data that were even beyond Zayri’s comprehension. She made sure to set explosive devices at all of the main consoles in all such rooms they came across.
Moving on into one building both she and Marcy lost control of their stomachs at one glance as to what the room contained. If the sight hadn’t been enough the smell would have been.
Piles of stillborn babies many of which seemed to be monstrous in appearance lay piled in carts along with their sightless human mothers from which the abominable creations had been surgically hacked out of.
Holding hands Marcy and Zayri helped each other step free of the building and together both of them quickly closed the double doors. Tears falling they turned back to the task at hand their minds however still living in the horror of what they’d seen.
A jackal guard stumbled from a building in apparent drunkenness and he let out a yip of pain before falling down under the flashing knives of the two women, who savagely attacked him, until all breath was gone from him. Leaving the corpse they both slid up to the still open doorway and peered within.
An assortment of jackal men and hybridized more human looking men were having a good old time drinking and playing what appeared to be a virtual reality game of some kind. Slowly Marcy closed the door and Zayri dug a lock from her pack and affixed it to the closed door.
Both women then chucked a half-dozen small explosive devices onto the roof of the gaming hall. For both of them the job had become an entirely personal one and not one founded out of any acquirement of loot.
Meeting up with several of the others one gestured to a large building at his rear and shrugged as if he didn’t know what to do. Zayri followed along after him toward the building in question.
Stepping past the fallen jackal guard she witnessed a panoramic view of prison cells filled with females of all ages up to about the age of thirty years. They stared at her despondently as if all hope had long since been washed from the recesses of their minds by the cruelty of their overlord masters.
Turning to the others Zayri said, “Get them out of here!”
“But how?” The man asked helplessly.
“I don’t care! Just get them out and away from this compound! If you have to make several trips to the planet in one of the airships then do it!”
“Alright Zayri, but you know this could endanger the whole operation?”
Zayri stared the man down and he turned away without a further word of protest as he began opening up cells.
Zayri followed along by Marcy went back out into the night and approached the grandest of the buildings within the palace compound. Loud noise emanated from it, but no guards were apparent on its gabled porches of which they were many.
Slipping up the marble stairs Zayri and Marcy stole along the walls and then slipped in and through an entryway that was lined with pillars. Moving from pillar to pillar to either side of the main walkway both women came to the end of the pillars. The walkway at the end of the pillars began descending in a flight of stairs to a sunken amphitheater styled temple.
In horror both women watched as hundreds of the fallen creatures within the sunken temple before them engaged themselves in what appeared to be the opening stages of a ritual sacrifice of five young girls tied off to five central pillars that rose all the way from the pit of the temple’s lowest point and up past their elevation to the high vaulted roof overhead. Off to the one side of the five central pillars were five upraised dais that had five thrones on them. Each of the thrones had one of the falcon men sitting upon it.
They seemed far older in appearance than the jackal men and far more cunning whereas the jackals put off only the barest evidence of an advanced intellect. Both women looked to each other at a loss as to what to do.
Zayri looked about the place in search of anything that could be a match in terms of a device that could alter the order of the orbiting suns. Beyond the five pillars and opposite of the five thrones lay an entrance way to a subterranean destination.
Squinting Zayri was able to see a glyph depicted over the entrance way that showed in bright colors a planet half on fire with one sun and a dark object that surely must be the second sun, only it was still in the position of antiquity directly opposed to the larger sun on the other side of the planet. That was curious, Zayri mused to herself.
She gestured to the entryway and Marcy pointed with emphasis to the hall filled with the ranks of the enemy as if to say, “Don’t you see them? How do you think we could ever get over there unnoticed?”
Zayri looked back out at the sunken temple and her eyes fell on the serving women that moved with downcast eyes and chained together hands about the scene serving cups of alcoholic beverages to the chanting crowds of beast men calling out for the blood of the innocent girls chained to the five pillars. Her eyes left the serving women to meet Marcy’s and Marcy reacted vehemently by shaking her head no and gesturing with her arms that she wanted no part in such a plan.
“Please.” Zayri mouthed out to Marcy.
“Why?” Marcy mouthed out in return and then added, “He’s not my man! Why should I risk my life anymore for him in order to find some silly device that’ll set the planet right again and wipe out our hiding spot?”
Zayri read all the words from her friends lips clearly and by way of an answer she pointed to the petrified five young girls standing bound off to the pillars at the temple’s center.
Marcy looked away from them and back to her resignedly and Zayri mouthed out, “If we don’t crush the power these monsters have there will be more girls chained to those pillars! Is that what you want?”
Marcy looked at her sourly before nodding her assent to take part in the plan. Both women withdrew back the way they had come in and skirted around the outside of the beast man’s temple, until they found an entrance way that appeared to be a slave entrance because of its lack of adornment.
Slipping down the stairs they startled two women standing there. Holding fingers to their lips they whispered for them to be quiet.
Nervously both women nodded and Zayri quietly explained that a rescue was being performed. The two women looked to her in quiet disbelief as if they couldn’t believe their ears.
“When serving women come back in for refills you need to tell them and have them start slipping out this way and head for the north gate of the palace compound. The other women are already there and waiting to be removed from the moon.”
In growing excitement both women nodded vigorously and said that they would do as asked.
Zayri and Marcy both reluctantly approached a pile of rags that left one mostly bare and open to the lecherous groping of beings not even fully human. Men were bad enough, but to do what they planned was a fate similar to rolling about in a snake pit.
“If this goes wrong I shall never forgive you Zayri.”
Zayri nodded, as she started to slip free of her clothes and said, “I’m with you on that one sister.”
Fully dawned with the apparel of a slave they finished by smearing dirt onto exposed flesh and messing their hair up to fit in with the picture of the other women, who had long since forgone any attempt to look appealing to the creatures that abused them on a daily basis.
Zayri picked up a pair of rusty iron manacles and the short length of chain that divided them and then affixed them around Marcy’s wrists. Marcy did the same to her and both women raised their eyes from their bound hands to each other.
In a small voice Marcy asked, “Do you believe there’s a God?”
Zayri’s eyes ducked away, “I think there is. I’m pretty sure my man serves Him. Why do you ask?”
A tear slipped down Marcy’s cheek, “Because I have the awful fear that I’m going to die!”
Zayri tried to hug her, but realized that she couldn’t with her hands now bound together. Instead she grasped Marcy’s hands tightly and said, “When we get out of here and we are! We’re going to find out for ourselves whether God exists or not. Got it?”
Marcy nodded and let go of Zayri’s hands to wipe at her tears. Both women turned and accepted a serving tray from the two women who had been watching.
The two women, who had been silent till now, both now spoke in unison, “There is a God and surely you both are His angels to do this for us!”
Zayri and Marcy looked at each other and despite the circumstances chuckled at the absurdity of that.
“We do not jest, but we speak the truth! Now go and see for yourselves that our God is a God that saves!” The one slave woman said proudly.
Zayri stared at the woman intently before asking, “How can you say that? Where has your God been while you’ve been raped and abused all these years?”
The woman shook her head, “I do not fault my God for the actions of others and as to where He has been well I’m looking even now at the proof of His mercy for us. Go with the grace of Elohim. The device to restore our world as it was before lays down the corridor behind the pillars, but you’ll need a jackal guard to open the door for you.”
Zayri nodded wondering at how the woman had known to tell her that. Both she and Marcy turned to enter out upon the temple floor, whose denizens were crying out for blood.
Marcy leaned in to whisper into Zayri’s ear, “How did she know what we came here for?”
“Perhaps God told her.” Zayri responded with as it was her best guess, which more and more seemed like a highly plausible answer.
Marcy nodded and both women stepped forward into the throng as they sought to ignore the incarnate evil of the beings they brushed past and were groped by. Looking through the shadowing veil of their hair both women while remaining apart angled toward the entrance way that lay at the back of the temple.
The tempo of the place had picked up a notch and the jackal men had begun to howl. Zayri felt her spirit quake inside of her and whispering too softly to be heard by any around her she said, “God if you truly exist then help me now!”
A jackal guard ahead of her was ignoring the festive focus of the rest of the pack and instead he was sizing her up lustfully. He made a step forward toward her and Zayri was about to drop the tray and run, when another serving girl stumbled into the jackal spilling her tray of drinks all over him.
With a snarled yip of fury the jackal guard struck the woman to the ground. Zayri meanwhile ducked out of view and hurried on through the crowded throng.
The jackal guard looked back only to see that the beautiful slave was gone and in consternation at having been denied a tryst with the woman he’d been focused on he now turned to inflict damage upon the woman at his feet, but there was no woman! He looked about in consternation and then figuring it had all been a mirage brought on by his drunkenness he once again joined in with the chanting of the others.
Zayri pressed ahead whispering under her breath, “I believe! I believe! I…….” Over and over again. She’d looked back only to see as the jackal man had that there had been no serving woman. God was real and He was helping her!
Her eyes found Marcy not too far from her and Marcy nodded with the clear light of comprehension in her eyes as if to testify that she’d seen it all and now believed too. Both women joined up at the entrance way and slowly backed down it all the while keeping wary eyes on the back of the enemy host within the temple, until they thought it safe to turn and run down the long hallway unseen.
*****
Reaching the last bend in the subterranean hallway Marcy and Zayri saw a pair of double doors guarded over by two more jackal men. They were more serious looking than was typical for jackal men.
“What’s the meaning of this?” One growled angrily, while growling was all the other one did.
Holding up the trays each sporting a solitary cup both women said what they’d practiced back down the hall in unison, “Refreshments your lords before you take your pleasure of us.”
The two jackal guards looked to each other before breaking out in a happy pant. They seized the cups off the trays and slugged the contents down voraciously.
Throwing the cups aside they knocked the trays from the women’s hands and ordered with eagerness, “Turn around slave meat!”
Both women did as ordered and were promptly shoved to their knees. That’s as far as the beast men got in the process of taking their pleasure of the women.
Both women rose up off the floor and turned to view the choking jackal men with contempt and utter disdain. Both guards had fallen to the ground and now they helplessly watched as the two women approached with small knives they’d pulled from somewhere. The poison in the drink raced through their systems paralyzing them to the point of not being able to take a breath let alone defend themselves.
Savagely both women cut their once boastful assailants throats and the inhuman eyes faded of life as their tongues lolled out of their canine mouths to the dusty floor of the passageway. Stepping past the bodies Zayri wiped the blood off her hands and studied the locking mechanism of the double doors.
Turning to the one jackal guard Zayri said hurriedly, “Help me get his hand over here before his body heat starts falling. Together the two women drug the beast until Zayri was able to plaster the things hand to the central panel lock receiver.
The door clicked as some inner mechanism was released and together the doors swung inward. A fortune in gold and gems unlike any other stretched out before them, but both women were past the desire for jewels.
All they wanted was the destruction of this place and its unholy host. Zayri was pretty sure as to how to go about doing it too.
Pointing to the left she said, “Think you can program that power consul to overload and explode?”
Marcie grinned and pulled a small explosive device out that had been pressed hidden between her breasts by the tight slave halter top she wore, “If not there’s always this.”
Zayri grinned and continued on up the stairs that lay before her that ended in a central pedestal that light radiated out from. She skipped unmindfully over piles of loot no doubt taken from a thousand slain generations of mankind just in order to rot within the confines of this madhouse.
Reaching the end of the stairs she moved carefully out onto a rune engraved surface that bespoke of dark rituals probably too numerous to count. Before her in the air spun an image of the planet, only it showed none of the damage of ice and desert fire that the present world did.
Something else that was off was that the suns were still in opposite orbiting paths. There was no indication of the one sun having been pulled in by the orbit of the larger sun.
Zayri liked to think of herself as an educated person even though she’d never had a day of class in her life. Life had been her classroom, but in addition to the treasures she’d stolen she’d also stolen knowledge and during her long waits between jobs she’d taught herself much of math, science and history.
It had always seemed an impossibility to her that the two suns could be so close together and not be pulled in the final separating distance and explode into each other thus wiping out the planet and all four moons and indeed probably this entire galaxy. Now those doubts were confirmed. The positions of the suns had not moved.
What then caused the appearance of the second sun to be in appearance where it wasn’t?
Furthermore what was stealing the heat of the smaller sun and holding it back from the surface of the planet?
Going to the center of the rune inscribed floor she picked up a small intricately made device. A device partly responsible for the death of billions of people.
She knew what the device was, only she’d never fathomed that it could be stretched to accomplish such a purpose as it had been. The device was a holographic Volon generator.
The projected image above her was the reverse image of what the cube in her hands was actively projecting in the universe beyond the four walls of this vault. The language inscribed on the box was unfamiliar to her, but having a little familiarity with such devices she knew that to see what the device was covering up cosmically the view lens had to be inverted.
She slid a small lever over and the projected image above her changed instantly. The planet she knew that was half ice and scorched sand was back, but the smaller sun, although where it had always been, was a black mass, while the projected fake sun was in close orbit with the larger sun.
There was a good reason for the blackened sun that gave off no light or heat. Directly behind it a gigantic rift in space had been opened up. All the projected heat energy and light cast off by the sun was being sucked by the vacuum of space somewhere else in the galaxy!
How the beast men had pulled off such a stunt was unfathomable. Almost as unfathomable as that was the question of how to stop it.
Staring at the blackened sun she had to admit she had absolutely no idea about how to restore it and close the rift in space. There was no way that she knew of unless…….unless there was a big enough explosion.
She’d seen on a mining planet where an unquenchable fire had been put out with an explosion. The principle worked because the air the fire needed to live and thrive was suddenly gone in the aftermath of an explosion. Could such a thing work in reverse?
The rift, an unquenchable fire, stealing the air it needed from one galaxy and jettisoning it into another. What if the vacuum induced pull on this side of the rift was interrupted and the gravitational forces of the sun were allowed to once again take over? The rift would likely be torn apart and possibly overwhelmed, in theory anyway.
Sudden noise drew her attention and she dropped flat as several jackal guards stormed into the treasure vault. Several of them started for the stairs and Zayri numbly considered what few options she had, which really boiled down to just two. Stand and fight or surrender and be tortured.
“Hey, you butt faced dogs! Over here chumps!” Zayri heard Marcy call out boldly from somewhere below.
Zayri peered over the edge of the platform in time to see the jackal guards on the verge of discovering her wheel around to look at Marcy who now stood in the doorway to the vault waving bye-bye at them.
“Catch me if you can flea bags! That is unless you’re too busy sniffing each other’s rears!”
Marcy took off running and the beast men tore back down the stairs after her with enraged howls of demented fury.
“Marcy what are you doing!” Zayri exclaimed under her breath, as she snatched up the holographic cube and ran down the stairs after the others.
Marcy was caught as Zayri knew she would be and as she cleared the mouth of the entrance to the vault where it opened up to the temple floor she heard Marcy cursing her captors with every cuss word she had in her considerable vocabulary of them.
Marcy was being dragged to the center of the five pillars where she was thrown to the ground before the five thrones of the watchful falcon men. The unholy congregation as a whole was packed in close to see what was transpiring.
The central falcon man of the five raised one arm and said with a voice that carried, “Tear her apart until she reveals what she was up to in the vault of secrets!”
Before the ravening horde could descend on Marcy, Zayri screamed out, “Touch one hair of her head and I blow your precious little device here to pieces!”
Heads swiveled to her from all those at the back of the room and the falcon men on their thrones at the other end of the room craned to see around the five central pillars, arranged as the points of a five pointed star, in order to get a glimpse at her.
The jackal men nearest to her closed in and holding up a similar explosive device such as the one Marcy had pulled free earlier she pushed a button on the tube and the small cylinder flashed red repeatedly. The jackal men drew back from her all the while snarling their menace at her.
“That’s right pups! I take my thumb off this and this device is history!” Zayri said, as she continued walking through the crowd that made way before her.
She stepped past the forgotten children, who had become silent spectators to what was going on, until she was by Marcy’s side. Marcy had some scratches and some bruising going on, but otherwise she was fine. The two women stepped back to back and faced the hall of snarling demons.
The central falcon man spoke, “It appears an insurrection has at last begun. Detonate the slave city!”
Almost on the heel of his words the ground shook and trembled violently.
Facing the lead falcon man Zayri called up to him, “You’re too late birdbrain! There already gone and any chance you had for victory went with them!”
“Explain!”
“We don’t have to explain anything to you poop feathers!” Marcy called out and the legion of dog men stepped closer, but halted as Zayri waived the flashing red cylinder about in the air in front of them.
“Trust me I’ll take my thumb off this button long before I allow one of you abominations to lay ahold of me!” Zayri called out threateningly.
The falcon men sitting on their thrones laughed and the admittedly dumber minded jackal men looked between the two women and their five leaders as if confused about what was going on.
“Go ahead and press the button you foolish girl!” One of the falcon men to the left called out.
“Yes, go ahead!” Another of them called out.
“Do it!” Cried out another, as all five of them continued to laugh insanely.
Zayri looked at all five of them and uncertainly she asked, “You all have a death wish or something?”
“That device you hold can’t reach but a few feet in terms of effective blast distance. And as for the box, we built it and if need be we can build another. In fact why build another one anyway, as who is there left to fool?” The lead falcon man called out to her as he regarded her contemptuously.
Zayri shook her head, “No, you’re lying! I know what materials it takes to build such a device and more than that I know that they no longer exist, because the world it came from doesn’t exist anymore. If I blow this device there’s no way you’re going to be able to build another one and I very much doubt that you want your little trick of years gone by to be revealed to the whole galaxy, because if it is, you will become the target of every free world that does not wish for their planet to end up the way this one has!”
All she received for her sound reasoning were chuckles from the beak shaped faces, who seemed more amused than alarmed with the situation.
The central one spoke, “I like your spirit! You’re an outsider I can tell. These slaves of ours are too tame by half. I think I’ll try you out for myself before I feast upon your flesh.”
“No dice beak face.” Zayri said resigned to her fate.
She lifted her thumb, as she closed her eyes reflexively not wanting to see her own death. Together both she and Marcy cringed from the expected blast as the ranks of surrounding jackal men scrambled to move back from the range of the device’s blast radius.
Nothing happened!
Zayri opened her eyes to behold the device before her glowing solid red. It should have exploded!
All her ears heard was the derision of the falcon leaders as they thumped at their thrones with their fists. Their laughter was soon picked up by all those within the temple.
The sound was deafening and in horror Zayri turned to meet Marcy’s eyes which reflected her own horror at the situation. Zayri threw the worthless explosive from her and held hands tightly with Marcy. There was nothing they could do now, but wait for the inevitable.
The falcon leader held one hand up and gestured with his other to a small cube that lay on the palm of his upheld hand. The laughter within the temple subsided and he called out as the other four falcon men stood up, “This device renders all energy weapons and bombs inert while in this temple. It’s sort of a safeguard against any wishing to stage a revolt. No weapon of yours will operate and no explosive that you have planted about the place will go off.”
“That’s good to know.” An out of breath voice called out.
*****
Zayri wheeled about to see me standing at the top of one of the stairways that led down into the lower temple area where everyone was congregated. I motioned for her to duck and turning she pulled Marcy down to the ground with her.
I was grateful beyond words to see her yet alive and just as mad to have heard the threats said against her. Coolly I drew my pistol and my breathing abruptly evened out past any ability of mind to do so.
I’m good with a gun, but in this moment I don’t think I could’ve missed even if I’d wanted to. The first shot shattered the cube in the pompous bird dude’s hand.
Two explosions immediately rang out. One near Zayri and Marcy and one deeper in the complex somewhere. I registered all that duly in the background as I continued to fan the trigger of my gun making each shot count.
The gun clicked on empty and the smoke clearing from my face revealed five keeled over bird carcasses on the thrones built by their vanity. Even as I counted my kills a greater series of explosions rumbled throughout the building and stonework from the ceiling started falling.
Like newborn puppies caught in a lightning storm the leaderless pack of jackal men broke apart and began scrambling for any exit they could find. Calmly I made my way down the steps before me thumbing shells into my gun from my belt.
Jackal men peeled away from me as their eyes lingered on the weapon in my hands that had defied their greatest technology and slain all their leaders in the pace of but a few seconds. If they only knew that I had but a six shot capacity.
Reaching the center of the temple area I holstered my gun and worked hard at freeing the girl tied off to the pillar, the base of which was stained red from the blood of countless past victims. Marcy and Zayri had the other four girls free and together they all rushed over to me, as I caught up the girl I had freed into my arms.
Marcy gripped a hold of my arm and said, “Thank you! You’re my hero!”
I gripped her arm in return and said, “No, thank you for risking your life like you have!”
She shrugged and moved on with the two girls she’d freed and calling back over one shoulder she said, “I’d do it again!”
Zayri was pressing into me and I saw the hint of tears in her eyes. “Come honey! Let’s get out of here!”
She nodded and together we took to the stairs with the two remaining girls and the one I held. The place was falling apart as more and more explosions rolled on and on in a continuous reverb of destruction.
Reaching the night air the entire place fell down behind us. What had held it up so long was hard to fathom, that is, if you weren’t a person of faith. As it was I saw faith written all over the doings of this night.
Zayri’s crew had gained control of most of the enemy’s airships and as we ran through the palace compound with exploding buildings all around us we were caught up by o