A Warrior's Revenge (12 page)

Releasing his grip Loric spun and slid
towards the device only to come up inches short of it, as the
Hunter’s forearm came around his throat and started to crush it. In
desperation and with the last of his air Loric lifted up to his
knees, while bent over at the waist with his hands on the floor and
managed to take a short crawl forward, as he carried the bulk of
the of the larger Hunter on his back. His available air spent he
fell forward flinging his hand out to close over the device, as the
Hunter on his back weighed him down to the floor.

Feeling on the verge of blacking out Loric
fumbled for the activate button and finding it his shaking fingers
pressed it hard. The Hunter’s, who were almost to him clutched at
their heads and went tumbling to the floor, even as the big Hunter
on his back slumped limp on top of him. Choking and gasping for air
Loric crawled out from under the big Hunter and half pulled himself
up against a wall breathing heavy, as he tried to collect
himself.

The Hunters seemed to be coming out of the
pain and going straight into the maddened craziness of the
realization of what had been done and worse what they had done
themselves. Loric knew full well what they were experiencing and
concentrating he put all his focus into relaying his own personal
experience into all of the minds of the Hunters.

They saw the identical agony of
consciousness as their own, but they also saw why he’d chosen to
live, and that there was a purpose worth living for, even a
forgiveness of peace that was to be had. There was also the natural
guttural urge to survive against all odds that was theirs
inherently from their birth as Valley Landers.

They were Valley Landers and that alone was
enough to make them fight through the screams of a monster in their
heads to stop their tirades of grief and rage to look in unison
towards Loric. He matched the hell he saw in their eyes with his
own remembered guilt as he made his way back up to his feet. The
rest of the Hunters filtered into the smoky room, until they were
all present.

Loric met their gazes and pounded his chest
over top of his heart and then gestured to them all, “For you and
them!” He said pointing to his head in indication of those that had
been lost and those they had helped kill for the enemy.

“For the hope of the future we survive,
Valley Landers and men of the Vallian! We fight on together!”

As one man they thumbed their fists to their
hearts and said, “Yes Lata!” Which meant master or commander in an
ancient dialect of Vallian.

Loric nodded glad to see the spark of life
in their eyes, even if he was not worthy of the respect they gave
him. He reached down and helped Rolanis up off the floor. Slapping
him on the back Loric said, “You about had me that time
friend.”

Rolanis’s face twisted in remorse, as he
finished wiping the blood and sweat from off of it. He started to
say something, but Loric waved it away and said, “No need to
apologize.”

Rolanis, as a boy had been a bully virtually
because of his large size, even then Loric had grown tired of it
and had met Rolanis’s challenge and in a flurry of flailing fists
and punches behind the old weaver’s cottage Loric had come out the
victor much to everyone’s surprise. The two boys had been the best
of friends from then on up until the day of their capture, when
they had ceased to be able to discern friend from foe, but had
known only the program dictates of their masters to kill everything
that lay beyond the Islander’s interests.

Loric headed for the stairs at a sprint and
the men of his birth followed closely behind him. The bunker was in
a state of panic, as people ran to and fro, all order completely
gone in the chaos that had erupted with the splintering of the
bunker from above. In their haste to make it to the surface the
former Hunters ran over top of staffers, security forces and
scientists alike.

Near the top of the stairs Loric saw an old
man crouched among other fallen and frightened people off to the
side of the stairs. “Bring him!” Loric shouted out and with a roar
Rolanis leaned forward and snatched the old man up, dragging his
badly shaking body along with them in their mad dash up the
stairs.

The group of men burst out of the doors of
the surface building and out into the open to see that it was the
only intact building left standing to be seen. Explosions rocked
throughout what was left of the once thriving city, as fires
consumed the rest. Dark black smoke billowed into the sky from the
burning fires of the city.

In the distance across the waters of the
city’s harbor Loric could see more smoke rising from another
island. It had taken the Islanders several weeks to destroy the
Valley Lands and an entire way of life. Ellanara had destroyed
their world in but fifteen minutes.

Loric turned to the old man, who was staring
brokenly out at the shattered industrial landscape of the city. The
man’s gaze came to meet Loric’s his face still disbelieving of
everything he was seeing.

“Do you see Doctor Tagean the mistake of
your enlightened movement now? The mistake was to leave any of us
alive. Your own methods have brought down your destruction upon
yourselves. Enjoy living here in our absence.”

The bar-Trinity zoomed to a stop overhead,
as individual whirlwinds of color swept down and caught up the
Valley Landers taking them upward into the ship. The bar-Trinity
cruised away out over the ocean, until it was out of view.

When the ship was out of sight the old man
fell to his knees crying at the destruction of literally everything
he had spent his life creating. There was nothing left of their
grand enlightenment. The only people left in any great number were
those who had been enslaved in the Southern Settlements, who now
ran free hunting every Islander that they could found, until there
would be none left.

The bar-Trinity sped out over the waves
toward the southwest, as those within recovered from the short
fight.

Kana cleaned and stitched the split over
Loric’s eye. She fretted over the other abrasions and bruises all
the while casting dirty looks over at the one called Rolanis, who
looked miserable for his part in the cause of them. Loric heard
exclamations from the front viewing area and got up against Kana’s
protests. He walked up to Ellanara’s side and looked out through
the windows at the barren wasteland that had once been known as
Assoria. A land of old hurts and division bound together by the
strength of two righteous kingdoms. That was all gone now and all
that was left was a barren wasteland where nothing could grow.

Loric shook his head bitterly at the sight
of the devastation of a once proud land. His father had taken him
here many times to speak to the wise one. Loric had known that it
was all gone, but seeing it made it all the worse.

Loric glanced over at Ellanara, as the
bar-Trinity came to a hovering stop over the mountains. “Why have
we stopped?” He asked questioningly, but she ignored him as she
typed something on a pad in front of her.

Loric reading over her shoulder saw the
message for that was what it appeared to be before she sent it.
‘I am leaving with the kindred of my father’s house and that of
our people that remain. I will send for you when I find a haven,
where we will be safe and able to flourish once again in the
stars.’

Loric looked at Ellanara, as the message
disappeared from off the screen, “Who are you sending messages to
here?” He asked stunned.

There was a slight ping of noise and he
glanced down to see a return message,
‘Well done Ellanara! We
will be ready. Godspeed and His will be done!’

Loric’s gaze rose from the message to meet
Ellanara’s intense blue luminescent ones, “Lanoria?” He whispered
in question.

She smiled back radiantly, “Yes.”

He shook his head and smiled too, “Now I
don’t feel as bad about our chances of survival. How many
survived?”

Ellanara smiled enigmatically and simply
said, “Enough.”

She would say no more on the matter and so
Loric ambled back over to the concerned face of Kana. Kana started
to say something admonishing about him leaving, while she was
fixing him up, but he preempted her by swinging her up into his
arms to her surprise. He started down the hall towards the back of
the ship, as her face flushed completely dark in embarrassment.

One of the Hunters called Satago asked with
a big grin on his face, “What do we do now Sir?”

“Do?” Laughed Loric on his way out of the
room. “Do whatever you feel like doing. I certainly know what I’m
going to be doing.”

“Loric!” Kana screeched out in humiliation,
but Loric just laughed and continued on down the hall in search of
a room.

There was an awkward silence in the room
that they’d left behind them. The silence was so acute that
Ellanara’s whispered mutter was picked up by several pairs of ears,
“Just like my father. Some things don’t change apparently.” Her
words may have been sarcastic in the sounding of them, but her lips
were tilted up in a smile, as she worked over her screens to
prepare the ship for its first journey into space.

The circular rings around the outer apex of
the two v-wings began to spin in one direction as parts of the main
fuselage began to spin in the opposite direction. The spinning
increased and green rays of light began to peel out of the spinning
turbines of the wings, even as a golden light began to spray out
from the fuselage. The two light trails intermixed into a weave of
colored light that was stunningly beautiful against the black
backdrop of the night sky.

The light trailed out from around and behind
the bar-Trinity, as the ship sped increasingly faster up and
outward into the dark space beyond the night. The atmosphere ahead
of the ship crackled with an iridescent blue mist that the
bar-Trinity flew into and then it was abruptly gone. Light Atomic
Reciprocal Particle travel, LARP travel. It was Ellanara’s upgrade
to the old vector-based water and gas vortex gate travel of her
father’s era.

There was no need for particle beam
assemblies or beacon arrays. The bar-Trinity could go anywhere it
wanted to; it just had to know a destination, which was the
problem. Little was known about where to go in space to find
habitable worlds. The only knowledge that remained from the time
before was the destination of where the ancestors had fled from and
out of the lack of anywhere else to go other than Earth, that
ancient series of worlds was where Ellanara was now headed for.

Assoria’s survivors.

The night sky was still and dark, as the
last tendrils of colored air had disappeared into nothingness. The
old man let the tablet with its glowing screen fall down by his
side in one hand, as he let his other hand fall onto the young
boy’s shoulder who stood beside him.

“Come, let us go back down. It is not good
to breathe the air out here for long.”

But the boy resisted, “Will we leave
soon?”

“In time we will, I’m not sure that it will
be soon though, but I hope so. Come Josavo.”

The boy took the old man’s hand and together
they walked back into the pitch darkness of the cave. The way
before them was lit from the glow of their eyes and hair and they
had no trouble finding their way in the dark of Lanoria.

“What if they do not find a place for us?”
The boy asked worried.

“We shall just have to have faith that they
will Josavo. If anyone can find us a safe place it will be my
sister Ellanara.” The old man said, as he and the boy disappeared
into the dark recesses of the cave.

Eshta made her way back through the halls
from her training session. She passed one kissing couple and rolled
her eyes. It hadn’t taken long for things to heat up on board the
bar-Trinity. They had been traveling in space for just over three
weeks and as far as she knew she was the last female standing so to
speak.

The other girls and the Hunters had all
paired up. It was disgusting!

They were everywhere kissing and
touching!

Eshta turned a corner and abruptly spun back
around it. For the love of something couldn’t they wait and do
stuff within the sanctity of their own rooms at least!

She headed back toward the bridge, at least
there she was safe from having to come upon scenes like she had
just witnessed.

There was only one unclaimed Hunter left and
he hounded her everywhere she went. Yesterday he’d had the nerve to
corner her in the eating area and tell her that by virtue of mutual
exclusivity that she was his, the arrogant dog!

She’d kicked him in the shin and when he’d
bent down to grasp at his leg she’d smashed his face down the rest
of the way onto the top of the table. She thought that would be
enough to dissuade his amorous desires for her, but he’d only
gotten worse. To make matters worse she’d only seen her sister a
handful of times in the past three weeks. When she had seen her
sister she had looked very happy and had little time for her. Eshta
was both tired of the situation she found herself in and
lonely.

She glanced up and saw Satago approaching
her from the bridge. Darn it!

Eshta wheeled back around only to hear him
hurry up toward her. He was so arrogant, obnoxious and on top of
that he was a fool!

He was always playing pranks or kidding her,
which she just found annoying, most of the time anyway. He’d been
after her since day one and she had to give him points for
persistence, but if he kept pressing her so help her she was going
to take his handsome face in both hands and smash it off her knee,
until he had better sense than to mess with her!

She turned and rammed a fist into his
stomach so hard his breath gushed out, but she wasn’t done. She
straightened him back up with a roundhouse punch that sent him
crashing back against a doorway. Before he recovered she grabbed
both of his wrists and slammed them back against the door. She was
eye level with his full lips and distracted for a moment she lost
her focus. Her eyes lifted to his and she blinked what had she been
going to say?