Out of the Dark (61 page)

It wasn’t much. It was simply all he had to give.

But before I go home to face His Majesty, there’s one last thing I need to do. Jainfar’s main batteries will reduce this accursed world to
asteroids.
If there
are
any Kreptu or Liatu hiding down there, they’ll never have expected
that
or prepared their hideouts to survive it, so.
. . .

“Are we ready, Ahzmer?”

“We are according to my readouts,” the ship commander replied. But there was something peculiar about his tone, and Thikair looked at him.

“Meaning what?” he asked impatiently.

“Meaning that according to my readouts, all shuttles have returned and docked, but neither
Stellar Dawn
nor
Imperial Sword
have confirmed recovery of their small craft. All the transports have checked in, but we haven’t yet heard from either industrial ship.”

“What?”

Thikair’s one-word question quivered with sudden, ice-cold fury. It was as if all his anxiety, all his fear, guilt, and shame suddenly had someone
else
to focus upon, and he showed all of his canines in a ferocious snarl.

“Get their commanders on the com
now
,” he snapped. “Find out what in Cainharn’s Ninth Hell they think they’re doing! And then get me Jainfar!”

“At once, Sir! I—”

Ahzmer’s voice stopped abruptly, and Thikair’s eyes narrowed.

“Ahzmer?” he said.

“Sir, the plot. . . .”

Thikair turned to the master display, and it was his turn to freeze.

Six of the expedition’s seven dreadnoughts were heading steadily away from the planet.

“What are they—?” he began, then gasped as two of the dreadnoughts suddenly opened fire. Not on the planet—on their own escorts!

Nothing in the galaxy could stand up to the energy-range fire of a dreadnought. Certainly no mere scout ship, destroyer, or cruiser could.

It took less than forty-five seconds for every one of Thikair’s screening warships to die . . . and every one of his transport ships went with them.

“Get Jainfar!” he shouted at Ahzmer. “Find out what—”

“Sir, there’s no response from Squadron Commander Jainfar’s ship!” Ahzmer’s communications officer blurted. “There’s no response from
any
of the other dreadnoughts!”

“What?”
Thikair stared at him in disbelief, and then alarms began to warble. First one, then another, and another.

He whipped back around to the master control screen, and ice smoked through his veins as crimson lights glared on the readiness boards. Engineering went down, then the Combat Information Center. Master Fire Control went off-line, and so did Tracking, Missile Defense, and Astrogation.

And then the flag bridge itself lost power. Main lighting failed, plunging it into darkness, and Thikair heard someone gobbling a prayer as the emergency lighting clicked on.

“Sir?”

Ahzmer’s voice was fragile, and Thikair looked at him. But he couldn’t find his own voice. He could only stand there, paralyzed, unable to cope with the impossible events.

And then the command deck’s armored doors slid open, and Thikair’s eyes went wide as a
human
walked through them.

Every officer on that bridge was armed, and Thikair’s hearing cringed as a dozen sidearms opened fire at once. Scores of bullets slammed into the human intruder . . . with absolutely no effect.

No, that wasn’t quite correct, some numb corner of Thikair’s brain insisted. The bullets went straight
through
him, whining and ricocheting off the bulkheads behind him, but he didn’t even seem to notice. There were no wounds, no sprays of blood. His
clothing
rippled as if in a high wind, but his body might as well have been made of smoke, offering no resistance, suffering no damage.

He only stood there, looking at them. And then, suddenly, there were more humans. Three of them. Only
three
. . . but it was enough.

Thikair’s mind gibbered, too overwhelmed even to truly panic, as the three newcomers seemed to blur. It was as if they were half transformed into vapor that poured itself forward, around and past the first human, streaking through the command deck’s air with impossible speed. They flowed across the bridge,
enveloping
his officers, and he heard screams. Screams of raw panic which rose in pitch as the Shongairi behind them saw the smoke flowing in
their
direction . . . and died in a hideous, gurgling silence as it engulfed them.

And then Thikair was the only Shongair still standing.

His body insisted that he had to collapse, but somehow his knees refused to unlock. Collapsing would have required him to move . . . and something reached out from the first human’s green eyes and forbade that.

The green-eyed human walked out into the body-strewn command deck and stopped, facing Thikair, his hands clasped behind him, and his three fellows gathered at his back, like guards of honor.

The green-eyed human was the shortest of the four. Two of the others were much taller than he—both of them in garments bearing the mottled camouflage patterns the humans’ militaries favored, although the patterns were different. One of them—the taller one, in the pale, almost dusty-looking camouflage pattern—had brown eyes and a skin dark as night. The other could have been designed as his antithesis: clad in a darker, more forestlike pattern, with blue eyes, fair skin, and wheat-colored hair. The third was only a very little taller than their chieftain, and he, too, had green eyes, but terrifying as the hate in those eyes was, they lacked the power and dark fury crackling in the ones which held Thikair motionless.

Silence hovered, twisting Thikair’s nerves like white-hot pincers, and then, finally, the human leader spoke.

“You have much for which to answer, Fleet Commander Thikair,” he said quietly, softly . . . in perfect Shongair.

Thikair only stared at him, unable—not allowed—even to speak, and the human smiled. There was something terrifying about that smile . . . and something wrong, as well. The teeth, Thikair realized. The ridiculous little human canines had lengthened, sharpened, and in that moment Thikair understood exactly how thousands upon thousands of years of prey animals had looked upon his own people’s smiles.

“You call yourselves ‘predators.’” The human’s upper lip curled. “Trust me, Fleet Commander—your people know nothing about
predators
. But they will.”

Something whimpered in Thikair’s throat, and the green eyes glowed with a terrifying internal fire.

“I had forgotten,” the human said. “I had turned away from my own past. Even when you came to my world, even when you murdered billions of humans, I had forgotten. But now, thanks to you, Fleet Commander, I
remember
. I remember the obligations of honor. I remember a Prince of Wallachia’s responsibilities. And I remember—oh,
how
I remember—the taste of vengeance. And that is what I find most impossible to forgive, Fleet Commander Thikair. I have spent five hundred
years
learning to forget that taste, and you have filled my mouth with it once more.”

Thikair would have sold his soul to look away from those blazing emerald eyes, but even that was denied him.

“For an entire century, I hid even from myself—hid under my murdered brother’s name. But now, Fleet Commander, I take back my
own
name. I am Vlad Drakulya—Vlad, Son of the Dragon, Prince of Wallachia—and you have
dared
to shed the blood of those under
my
protection.”

The paralysis left Thikair’s voice—released, he was certain, by the human-shaped monster in front of him—and he swallowed hard.

“Wh-what do you—?” he managed to get out, but then his freed voice failed him, and Vlad smiled cruelly.

“I could not have acted when you first came, even if I had been prepared to—
willing
to—go back to what once I was,” he said. “There was only myself and my handful of closest followers, and we would have been far too few. But then you showed me I truly had no choice. When you decided to build a weapon to destroy every living human, when you seized those under my protection upon whom to experiment for that purpose, you made my options very simple. I could not permit that—I
would
not. And so I had no alternative but to create more of my own kind. To create an army—not large, as armies go, but an army still—to deal with you.

“I was more cautious than in my . . . impetuous youth. The vampires I chose to make this time were better men and women than I was when I was yet breathing. I pray for my own sake that they will balance the hunger you have awakened in me once again, but do not expect them to feel any kindness where you and
your
kind are concerned.

“They are all much younger than I, new come to their abilities, not yet strong enough to endure the touch of the rising sun. But, like me, they are no longer breathing. Like me, they could ride the exteriors of your shuttles when you were kind enough to recall them from Romania and Russia to North America. When you used them to evacuate all of your surviving personnel to your transports . . . and to your dreadnoughts. And like me, they have used your neural educators, learned how to control your vessels, how to use your technology.”

That terrible voice paused for a moment, and the fire in those eyes turned colder than the space beyond the dreadnought’s hull.

“I learned much in my . . . conversation with your Ground Base Commander Shairez,” Vlad said then. “Oh, yes, she was
eager
to tell me anything I might possibly wish to know before the end. And I learned still more probing the history in your educators’ data banks. Interrogating your other base commanders one by one as your installations fell. I know your Empire’s plans, Fleet Commander. I know how the Hegemony came to be, how
it is organized. And I know how its Council has chosen to regard the human race—how
casually
it tossed this entire planet into the hands of the murderous vermin who have killed two-thirds of those who lived upon it. Who would have killed
all
of them out of frustrated ambition and fury at their having
dared
to defend themselves against unprovoked invasion.

“Oh, yes, Fleet Commander, I have learned a great deal, and I will leave your educators here on Earth, to give every single breathing human a complete Hegemony-level education. And, as you may have noticed, we were very careful not to destroy your industrial ships. What do you think a planet of humans will be able to accomplish over the next few centuries, even after all you have done to them, from that starting point? And how do you think they will respond to what the Hegemony Council allowed—
encouraged
—you to do to their world and to their people. Do you think the Council will be pleased?”

Thikair swallowed again, choking on a thick bolus of fear, and the human cocked his head to one side.

“For myself, I doubt the Council will be very happy with you, Fleet Commander. But do not concern yourself with that. I promise you
their
anger will have no effect upon your Empire. After all, each of these dreadnoughts can shatter a planet, can it not? And which of your worlds will dream, even for a moment, that one of your own capital ships might pose any threat to it at all?”

“No,” Thikair managed to whimper, his eyes darting to the plot where the green icons of his other dreadnoughts continued to move away from the planet. “No,
please
. . .”

“How many human fathers and mothers would have said exactly the same thing to
you
as their children died before their eyes?” the human replied coldly, and Thikair sobbed.

The human watched him mercilessly, but then he looked away. The deadly green glow left his eyes, and they seemed to soften as they gazed up at the taller human beside him.

“Keep me as human as you can, my Stephen,” he said softly in English. “Keep me sane. Remind me of why I tried so hard to forget.”

The dark-skinned human looked back down at him and nodded, and then the green eyes moved back to Thikair.

“I believe you have unfinished business with this one, my Stephen,” he
said, and it was the bigger, taller, darker, and infinitely less terrifying human’s turn to smile.

“Yes, I do,” his deep voice rumbled, and Thikair squealed like a small, trapped animal as the powerful, dark hands reached for him.

“This is for my daughters,” Stephen Buchevsky said.

Dave Dvorak stood gazing up into the frosty, moonless night sky with one arm wrapped around his wife’s shoulder. The other arm was still immobilized, but it was getting better. And it looked like Hosea MacMurdo was going to get the opportunity to rebuild his left shoulder, after all.

In fact, a lot of things were going to happen “after all.” His children were going to live and grow up, have children of their own. His country was going to emerge from the wreckage and the carnage once again. Other nations around the globe would live once more, mourning their dead but
alive
. His entire world was going to survive.