Demon Lord V - God Realm (24 page)

Mirra stood
frozen, a hand clamped over her mouth as she stared at the smoking
hoof prints in the dull sand. Grem tugged her towards Mithran, who
also stared at the hoof prints, then stepped forward to take
Mirra's arm. She turned to him, glancing at the silver-clad beings
with deep trepidation. Mithran followed her gaze, but the strangers
lowered their weapons and muttered strange words, then turned and
headed back towards the silver ovoid.

"It seems that
they didn't like our steeds," Grem commented.

"Can't say I
blame them," Mithran replied.

Mirra lowered
her hand. "We needed them."

"Bane will
summon more. Come, let's go and see if he's in that thing."

"If he is, he
certainly did not tell them to banish the steeds."

"All the more
reason to find out what's happened to him. He might need our
help."

"At last,"
Grem muttered.

Chapter Eleven

Torment

Nikira studied
the screen, frowning. The thin, filthy people filed into one of the
empty holds, their eyes flitting around. Many cringed and whimpered
as they walked through the disinfectant mist wall at the door,
wiping their damp faces afterwards and sniffing their hands. A
small group caught her eye, six large men armed with swords, a
fair-haired girl and a frail elderly woman in a dirty white robe.
They stayed together, the men clustering around the women as if to
protect them. Servitors distributed food to the people, who rushed
forward to snatch it up and cram it into their mouths. The elderly
woman sat down on one of the air mattresses that had been deployed
in the hold, and the girl sat beside her, looking nervous. Two of
the armed men left them to fetch food, showing more discipline than
the rest, who acted like rabble.

"They're
starving," she murmured.

Montar, who
stood beside her, nodded. "What do you expect? They're a
dra'voren's slaves."

"Can we
communicate with them?"

"No, but the
linguistics personnel are working on it."

"Good. Has the
girl woken up yet?"

"No."

Nikira turned
to the observation window, where the dra'voren lay unmoving. "Are
the containment teams ready to go in there?"

Montar nodded.
"First we're going to pump enough gas in there to put a herd of
elephants to sleep. They've made up a table with clamps strong
enough to hold an elephant, too, and if that's not enough, they've
got a stasis field generator."

"How did they
manage that so quickly?"

"They're a
resourceful bunch. The portable stasis field generator is standard
issue, but strong enough to hold about ten people. The clamps were
a little harder to make so fast, but they managed."

"Let's do it
then. I want to get a closer look at this dra'voren."

Montar left,
and Nikira moved closer to the observation window, peering at the
dra'voren. A puddle of blood had congealed on the floor next to his
mouth. The thought of getting close to him, without the impregnable
barrier of the armoured glass between them, made her shiver. She
had hunted dra'vorens since she had finished her training ten years
ago, and in that time they had destroyed only three. Finding them
was hard, but she had discovered, since taking command of
Retribution, that following a trail of destroyed domains sometimes
led to their destroyer.

Montar
appeared at her elbow, looking excited and nervous. "They're
pumping the gas in through the door, since there's no ventilation
system in there."

Nikira turned
to watch the contechs feed a rubber hose in through the door, which
had been opened just enough to admit it. As soon as the nozzle was
inside, a man turned the knob on the cylinder, and gas hissed from
the hose. Still the dra'voren remained unmoving, and she wondered
if he was shamming. After several minutes, the gas was switched off
and the hose withdrawn. The senior medtech, Jona, came in and
peered at the dra'voren. He glanced at the chronometer on the wall
and turned to Nikira.

"If he's
alive, he's either asleep by now, or dead."

She nodded.
"Let's do it then."

Three armed
contechs donned gas masks and entered the chamber, walking warily
around the dra'voren. One approached and poked him, getting no
reaction, then moved closer and gripped his shoulder, rolling him
onto his back. All three leapt back as the dra'voren flopped over,
his right arm sliding off his chest to fall limply onto the floor.
The contech moved closer again and laid a hand on the dra'voren's
neck.

"He's alive."
The contech's tinny voice came from the intercom. "He has a pulse,
and he appears to be unconscious."

Nikira
frowned. What were they dealing with? "Flush the gas and let the
medtechs examine him. Stand by with the stunner."

When the gas
had been sucked out with a scrubber unit, the contechs brought in
the table they had built and struggled to get it through the small
door. It was shaped like a broad cross, with clamps for the
dra'voren's wrists and ankles. The shredder chamber was small, and
the contechs placed the table next to the dra'voren. One man
unclipped the long, crimson-lined black cloak and handed it to a
comrade, who took it away for analysis.

Four contechs
lifted the dra'voren onto the table and fastened the clamps around
his ankles and right wrist, but the stone accoutrement on his left
forearm prevented them from clamping it. They discovered that the
stone was cracked, and a few well-aimed blows broke it sufficiently
for them to remove it. Jona, who observed, stepped forward to
examine the dra'voren's forearm, which looked bruised. He ran a
scanner over it and glanced up at Nikira.

"It's broken,
commander."

Nikira paced
around in a circle. "How can a dra'voren have a broken arm? How can
he even be alive?"

"He's
definitely alive," the medtech stated. "There's no way he could
fake this while he's unconscious."

"You don't
know that. We have no idea what he can do."

"Must I heal
it?"

"No. Clamp
it."

A contech
snapped the last clamp around the dra'voren's left wrist, and the
men relaxed, swapping relieved smiles. Nikira's curiosity overcame
her antipathy, and she entered the shredder chamber. Stopping
beside his head, she stared down at him, struck by his otherworldly
beauty. His brows' demonic slant, which contrasted starkly with his
sensitive mouth and alabaster skin, made her shiver. The medtech
examined the stranger's face and opened his mouth to find the
source of the blood.

"Looks like he
bit the inside of his cheek, either when he hit the floor or when
the stunner smacked him. That thing packs quite a wallop."

"What is he?"
Nikira snapped.

Jona swept a
hand-held scanner over the dra'voren's chest. "Human."

"He can't be
human. Your instrument is malfunctioning, or he's manipulating it
somehow."

"Commander,
he's unconscious." Jona unbuttoned the dra'voren's tunic, then the
shirt beneath it, and pulled it open. He recoiled with a curse.
"Bloody hell."

Nikira stared
at the terrible scars, her mind whirling in fresh turmoil. The
medtech hesitated, then eased the dra'voren's shirt open further,
discovering bandages around his waist.

"More
injuries." He cut away the cloth and examined the three puncture
wounds, one of which went right through the flesh of the
dra'voren's flank. "These two look like they were made by teeth,
the other one appears to have been made by a slender blade."

"What about
this?" Nikira indicated the bandage around the dra'voren's
head.

Jona cut it
off and forced open one of the dra'voren's eyes, exclaiming in
surprise again. "He's blind!"

Nikira turned
away. She found it hard to look at him, especially now that the
bandage around his head had been removed. He was the first
human-type dra'voren she had seen, and his chiselled beauty was
hard to stomach. His long jet hair fanned on the table in shining
feathers, and his skin seemed to glow in the bright light. In stark
contrast to the dirty, starving people who had been with him, not a
speck of dust marred his skin or clothes. He was well fed, his
exposed chest ridged with powerful muscles. Yet the medtech's
callous handling of him while he was unconscious seemed wrong
somehow, an affront to his dignity. The fact that he was alive
confused her. He breathed softly, and she wanted to touch him to
make sure he was real. She reminded herself that he was a
dra'voren, a world destroyer, and would have to be killed.

Jonar examined
the scars on the dra'voren's chest, muttering in amazement. "These
look like they've been cut and then burnt. They're old, but haven't
healed."

"If he can be
burnt, why didn't the light guns cut him to pieces?"

"I don't know,
commander."

"Take samples,
analyse them, and let me know what you find, then we'll have to
find a way to kill him."

Jonar looked
up at her. "Killing him will be easy."

"How?"

"Take a sharp
metal object and shove it through his heart."

"You're
sure?"

He nodded.
"Positive. All his wounds have been caused by sharp teeth or
weapons. He appears to be just like us in that respect. No abnormal
ability to heal, no apparent defences against such an attack."

"Never
underestimate a dra'voren, Jonar."

"Commander, if
you hadn't told me that he was one, I'd have said he was a normal
human being."

"Looking like
that?"

The medtech
shrugged. "Okay, he's perfectly formed, apart from the scars."

"Exactly. Too
damned perfect, as dra'voren are. The only problem is, if he's a
dra'voren, he's supposed to be made from intensified plasma
particles, which break down under blue fire. The guns and
lodestones should have ripped him apart, but instead you're telling
me that he's made from flesh and blood, when he set off every alarm
in the observation room and was plainly seen on the scanners to
contain dark power. How the hell do you explain that?"

"I can't. What
are you going to do with him then?"

Nikira snorted
and stared down at the dra'voren's peaceful face. "I'm going to
kill him, just as soon as we've finished examining him." She turned
to the contechs who hovered nearby. "Rig some sort of steel weapon
over his heart that can be triggered by remote. If Jonar's right,
it will come in handy to control him. I have no doubt that he's a
dra'voren, I just need to know what sort so we can be prepared for
the next one."

Nikira left
the shredder room, filled with unreasonable anger. Why did the
thought of killing him bother her so much? Montar trotted after
her.

"Commander, if
he's so unusual, shouldn't we take him back to base alive, so they
can examine him there?"

"Probably, but
only if we can hold him. If it looks like he might break free and
endanger the ship, we'll have to kill him."

"Of course. I
also think we might learn a lot from the people who were with
him."

Nikira turned
into her office and paused beside her desk. "Have the linguistics
personnel made any progress?"

"Not yet, but
an old woman in a white robe has tried to communicate with
signs."

"What sort of
signs? What do they think she's trying to say?"

Montar
shrugged. "They're not sure, but she seems to be asking about the
dra'voren."

"Probably
hoping that we've killed him. See if our people can tell her that
he's going to die, very soon. That might cheer her up."

"Right."

Sarrin stared
at the man who stood before her, looking a little smug in his
silver suit. Artan nudged her.

"What did he
say?"

"I think he
just told me that they've killed Bane, or they're going to."

"They can't do
that!"

Sarrin faced
the man again and shook her head, then clasped her hands in a
gesture of pleading. "No. You must not kill him!"

The lingtech
looked puzzled, shaking his head.

Sarrin pointed
to herself, then at the doorway behind the man, and clasped her
hands again. "Please take me to him."

The man shook
his head and turned away, ignoring Sarrin's pleas.

Nikira looked
up as Montar walked into the observation room, his expression
tense. "What is it?"

"The girl's
woken up, and she's screaming the place down."

"Poor thing.
She's probably traumatised by what she's been through. Take her to
the others, maybe they can comfort her. How is she?"

"Malnourished
and exhausted, but otherwise okay."

Nikira studied
a screen, in which a moving vista of buff stone changed as they
travelled into a dark region. "No sign of torture or abuse?"

"No."

"What about
the dra'voren?"

Montar
shrugged. "The medtechs are monitoring his brain waves and
heartbeat. They'll let us know if he's going to wake up. They've
got every monitor in the lab hooked up to him. If he has an itch
we'll know about it."

Nikira nodded,
and Montar left. The commander gazed at the screen with blind eyes,
her mind filled with an image of the dra'voren's striking
countenance. Once again the sense that she was treading on hallowed
ground by interfering with this particular dra'voren plagued her.
What was it about him that instilled such a strange combination of
awe and desire in her? It frightened her, and she longed to see him
again, but fought the urge.

A light
flashed on the console, and she brushed her finger over it,
activating another screen. Jonar's face filled it.

"You should
come, commander. We think he's waking up."

"On my
way."

Nikira hurried
into the containment room, her heart pounding. Contechs scuttled
about, monitoring screens and adjusting instruments. In the
shredder chamber, the dra'voren lay on the table, a gleaming steel
blade attached to a brace over him, aimed at his heart and powered
by a tightly coiled, heavy-duty spring. If it was triggered, it
should slice right through his chest and out of his back.