A Warrior's Revenge (18 page)

The smile from her stunned me. I hadn’t been
expecting that! It was as if she liked me! What had happened to
bring that about?

I thought about it and it occurred to me
that it was when I had said I had created the sword. I hadn’t
thought divulging something like that would have produced such a
reaction from her. Suddenly I realized something and I came to
awareness with the knowledge that my little Queen was probing
through my thoughts, while I had been distracted. I couldn’t really
be angry with her, after all I had given her permission. It was
also an encouraging sign to see her reaching out to discover more
about me.

Silently I thought projected to her, “Well
how about it then, why did telling you about the sword make such a
positive impression on you?”

Her answer was rather hesitant and almost
shy in reply, “My father’s sword means a lot to me. I’ve always
been amazed by how beautiful and yet powerful it was in a seemingly
limitless fashion. Knowing that despite how mean and angry you
always seem to be that you made that sword makes me think that
there is a finer side to you than I first thought there was.”

I sucked in a little breath, as I felt her
probing deeper into my mind, “You were right the first time, just
mean and angry.”

“I don’t think so. I think you’re just
trying to cover up how hurt and alone you feel.”

I cut her probing of my thoughts off by
distracting her by flooding the ship’s data receivers with the map
of the planetary system that I resided in. I had thought I had
succeeded in distracting her away from my thoughts to the data that
was filling out all the screens within the room, when she glanced
my way with a look that said she knew what I’d done.

“Stay out.” I clearly conveyed to her out of
a need for self-preservation.

Her face twisted a little mischievously,
“Why? You’re the one who invited me in after all.”

My jaw tightened, as I glared at her, but
she seemed to ignore my outward appearance, as she kept digging
through my thoughts and memories. She was a very dangerous
woman!

I kept my mind opened to her exploration of
it by an act of will. I’d given my word that she was free to do
what she was doing and I never broke a promise I made, ever! I just
hadn’t expected her to delve this way into me. It was alarming and
very uncomfortable.

Ellanara watched Salanicus, only partly
paying attention to what he was saying, as he stood before the
ship’s crew and explained the galaxies’ planetary systems to them
and the pertinent points of fact about it that he thought they
needed to know.

He wasn’t at all what she had thought. He
was far from being just a mean angry person on a revenge kick. He
was a sensitive person, with a lot of past hurts that had made him
bitter. Her eyes glanced over his frame and once again she was
struck by how intimidatingly he was made. Her brother Talaric had
been a big man at six foot four inches and he had been very
muscular, as had all the men of her family, but Salanicus was an
entirely different story.

He was almost seven feet tall, which made
him the tallest man she had ever seen and then there was his build
that went along with his height. Her face flushed slightly, as she
looked at the massive flexing of the shoulder muscles moving, as he
outlined the galaxy with one outstretched hand that was displayed
on a large screen at the one end of the control room. She didn’t
know much about such things, but surely she and him couldn’t………

Her face flushed red at the direction of her
thoughts and she watched with a grimace, as the pulsing of her ring
picked up in time with her heartbeat. She glanced over to where
Rolanis’s massive hands rested on the thin narrow shoulders of
Solin, who pressed back against him adoringly. It had been an odd
pairing, the biggest of the Hunters paired with the most petite of
all the women. They were making it work quite obviously, as
evidenced by Solin’s emerging signs of pregnancy.

Surely the comparison of her and Salanicus
wasn’t much different if one adjusted for size. She was taller and
bigger than Solin was, but was that enough? She just didn’t know?
He thought she was beautiful. She knew that because he’d told her
as much in an unguarded moment that had been genuine in its
honesty. He was probably just like her father and brothers. He,
like them, was the kind of man who wouldn’t be able to keep his
hands off of his wife. Would that be a good thing or a bad
thing?

Oh how she wished that she had her mother to
talk to. That thought almost made her cry. She was a fool for
letting herself go down this road. She was just torturing herself
with thoughts about her mother and the conversations that she would
never have with her. She shoved her private thoughts and fears to
the side and concentrated more on what Salanicus was saying in
terms of the galaxy that she now dwelled in.

So that was it, I mused to myself, as I
cautiously scanned through Ellanara’s thoughts careful not to
announce my presence. I had glanced over at her once briefly during
my presentation to see her staring at me somewhat vacantly and
overcome by curiosity I had delved deeper. It had been a relief to
find out several things.

She seemed to have no prejudice in regard to
me, because of my skin color, as so many of the Vallians had in the
old days, when my people and theirs had shared this planetary
system. I had already somewhat relaxed in terms of believing that
could be a hang-up to our relationship, when I had seen the woman
that the warrior called Loric had picked out for himself.

The other thing was that she didn’t seem
opposed to me physically, but was actually highly attracted to me.
But she was scared of my size. I could work with that. Best of all
though, I could tell that she was beginning to like me for who I
was, which made her very special in my eyes.

A question distracted me and I broke off
from mining Ellanara’s thoughts to focus on Loric who’d asked the
question, “How did the Orlandian’s become so prevalent? I thought
they just had a colony in space.”

I thought about the answer for a little
while. Did they really want to know? They might as well know at
some point. “The Sallaconese were the first to reach this galaxy
from Earth. Later after we were already well-established the
Orlandian’s came. They kept to themselves and we were content to
leave them alone. This planetary system has eleven habitable worlds
and three habitable moons. We had claimed five of the worlds for
ourselves and one of the moons. The Orlandian did not contest this
and they settled on five of the smaller worlds. Time went by and
our two peoples existed in virtual isolation from each other. Then
the Vallians arrived. Slowly at first and then in greater numbers
they filled into our system of worlds. They had a grudge with the
Orlandian’s and almost immediately there was war between the two
peoples. The Vallians claimed the last of the six smaller planets
and the two moons that orbited it. The Sallaconese people remained
neutral, as the two peoples fought it out. Even though outnumbered
the Vallians made steady progress and eventually conquered one of
the Orlandian worlds. We had an exact similarity of belief as the
Vallians and impressed with their skill at fighting we came out of
neutrality and helped them, as we did not care for the Orlandian’s.
Two more Orlandian worlds fell. The last two would have soon
followed, if it hadn’t been for the treaty the Vallians signed with
the Orlandian’s. The Vallians had a chance at complete and total
victory, but they allowed themselves to be bought over by the
Orlandian’s, who offered them everything in return for a
cease-fire. The Vallians commenced world building and increased in
both numbers and technology. They outgrew their planets and moons
and settled on the Orlandian worlds, which we advised them not to.
A social divide arose between many of the Sallaconese and the
Vallians, as the latter bonded more and more with the Orlandian’s
they had settled down among. Time passed and we became as isolated
in contact with the Vallians, as we had been with the Orlandian’s
before them. There were a few families of the Vallians that did
stay in direct contact with us. The Ta’lonts were one of those
families. It all fell apart though.”

Three additional worlds appeared on the
planetary system map that was displayed behind me. The three worlds
were close together and very large. They were also a little apart
from the rest of the planets in the galaxy system and they were
surrounded by the leftover debris of a blown apart star.

“Even after all the years we had been in
this galaxy system we never knew that these three worlds existed.
The presence of these three worlds had been shielded from us by the
leftover radiation of the dead star’s supernova explosion sometime
in the distant past. The Orlandians said that they had come
directly from Earth, but they had lied. Their ancestors arrived on
these three worlds shortly after we first arrived in the system
ourselves. At the time they were as many Orlandian’s as there were
of us. They hated us, but we were too powerful for them to overcome
easily so they left us alone. In the years of isolation between us
and the Vallians, the Vallians befriended, even adopted the
Orlandian survivors of their earlier war against each other into
their families. The Vallians taught and shared more and more of
their advanced technology with the Orlandian survivors. The
Orlandian survivors meanwhile passed the information on secretly to
their base home worlds in this galaxy that neither the Sallaconese
or the Vallians knew about. Over the years the Orlandian’s learned
everything that the Vallians knew. They built a fleet of airships
and several armies and invaded suddenly, taking the Vallians
completely by surprise. Millions of the Vallians died in the
onslaught of the Orlandian’s advance within but days of the
surprise attack. Within three months the Vallians were reduced by
less than half of their former number and they pleaded with us to
come to their aid. Our nations had never been friendly with each
other, after the Vallians had left our courts to foster their
relationship with the Orlandian survivors over any diplomatic
relation with us. My father almost refused to offer help, but then
he changed his mind and agreed. He knew that we would be next and
that it was doubtful that we would fare any better against the more
advanced knowledge and abilities of the enemy. He agreed to help
the Vallians, if they shared everything of their technology with us
and helped us fight the war with their remaining ships and
warriors. They agreed wholeheartedly. We mobilized our entire fleet
and headed to rendezvous with the rest of what remained of the
Vallians’ force. When we reached the spot set up to rendezvous it
was only to find out that they weren’t there. The entire Orlandian
fleet was though. At first we thought that the Vallians had been
destroyed before we could get there, but later we found out that
they had never been there. They had leaked information, as to the
rendezvous location to the Orlandian’s. It was a complete betrayal
of us plain and simple. The Vallians didn’t want to lose any more
of their people and they thought the Orlandian’s were just too
powerful to overcome, even with our combined forces. They
sacrificed us so that they would have the time they needed to
escape the system without being followed. The Orlandian’s opened
fire on us and we lost most of our ships in that battle. We lost
all of our ships capable of long distance travel in that battle as
well. We were stuck here. We resisted as best as we could for as
long as we could, but the Orlandian’s were relentless and their
technology that they had stolen from the Vallians was greater than
ours and proved our undoing. They never offered us terms of
surrender or peace negotiations of any kind and they wouldn’t
listen to any of ours. We even offered to leave the galaxy entirely
if they would just let us go. They just kept killing, until there
were none of us left. A people numbering almost 500,000,000 was
reduced to less than five thousand in a little over three years.
Those survivors have been hunted ever since, until just recently,
but I fear that is soon to end too. The Orlandian’s have been
surprisingly slow to increase in population over the years. They
only re-colonized the five smaller worlds and one of the larger
ones that they took from the Sallaconese. They seem content if not
bored with the state of the galaxy. They’ve advanced some in
technology, but nowhere at the pace of the Vallians before them.
They seem to be having too much fun to care about anything else. I
think given enough time they would die out as a people, as the
excesses they indulge in are quite hazardous to their health and
quality of reproductive ability. Having children is actually
frowned upon and what children are born are abused horrifically. My
people are scattered in small groups over the remaining four
planets and one moon. This is the state of the galaxy that you find
yourselves suddenly having to survive in just as my people have for
a thousand years in the shadow of lesser men.” I said, as I wrapped
up my lengthy introduction to the galaxy. The room of faces that I
looked out upon were shocked.

A young woman with a maimed hand whispered
out, “You must surely hate us!”

Looking at her I could find nothing to hate.
This was the first time that any of these people had heard about
anything to do of the treachery of their forefathers before them. I
had hated them, but surprisingly I found that most of my hate was
gone in the face of the reality of their clueless knowledge, as to
what had eaten up my years in bitterness. I hadn’t thought such a
change was possible so quickly within an individual and yet I was
living it.

“It does little good to hate you, especially
when we need each other to survive.” I said in response to the
young woman, wanting to put her at ease, as I could see the fear in
her eyes, as she rubbed at the unborn life that lay within her womb
with her one good hand.