DEATH IS EASY by Russell Madden

FREEDOM,  As If It Mattered by Russell Madden

The Guardian Project by Russell Madden

RaNdoM by Russell Madden

 

A heavy whump provided the six Xaneeri renegades their only warning. As though torn by giant hands, the tall, double warehouse doors blew inward, spinning and twisting like gigantic fallah leaves. The reinforced, versa-steel hinges proved no match for the shaped-charges ignited only moments before.

A cloud of smoke and steel slivers engulfed the cringing refugees where they huddled in the middle of the cercrete floor. The vast, empty space around them reverberated with the ear-numbing sound of the detonation.

Stunned, blinking their confusion, the four male and two female Xaneeri fugitives sought to reestablish their bearings. Their skeletal, nearly hairless bodies clearly marked them as aliens on the human dominated world of Jalaar. Delicate trails of blood streamed down their narrow, leathery faces. The oldest Xaneer, Chel, rose on wobbly legs to face their enemies.

He did not have long to wait.

Weaponless beyond his clawed fingers, Chel curled his hands into cages of frustration as the nearly dozen heavily armed intruders burst through the dissipating cloud. Like avenging ghosts in solid form, they descended upon him.

Without hesitation, the lead figure swung the dark, metal butt of his Class-III laser rifle at Chel's head. The Xaneer winced but made no move to dodge the blow.

The weapon crashed against the left side of his head, felling him like a ceremonial dehn-og. Unconscious and bleeding even more profusely, the knobby-kneed elder did not so much as twitch.

Crying or silent, the remaining five Xaneeri made no move to assist their friend. Before they could do so, the Xaneeri soldiers who had tracked them down encased their hands and lower legs in secure-webs.

A taller, helmeted soldier strode purposely towards the prisoners. Flipping up his battle visor, he swept his gaze across the captured targets.

A second soldier overseeing the packaging of the renegades hurried over. "She's not here, Overleader Stes."

"I can see that, Subleader Gendin," Stes snapped. His lipless mouthed worked as though he would say more. With a visible effort, he shook off his disappointment and fear. "By the Creator! Where in the nether realms are the rest of them!"

Turning to his subordinate, Stes said, "Bring that human, Brend Nahr, to me immediately."

With a shoulder salute, Gendin relayed his leader's order to a Unit. Moments later, the person in question -- a slightly overweight, balding human -- appeared in the breached doorway. Propelled along by Unit Sedch, Nahr stumbled to a stop before the soft-armored Xaneeri soldier.

"You said Zilvan and his followers would be here," he said icily. "All of them." He waved dismissively. "Not just this sorry lot of lame and aging dregs."

Swallowing, Nahr's eyes darted about the scene. Violently shaking his head, he said, "My latest information said they were here." His voice trembled. "They weren't supposed to leave Jalaar until later tonight."

The taller Xaneer stepped closer until his flat features stood mere centimeters from the informant's sweating face. "We paid you to deliver all of them to us. You let us down."

"No, no! I can't help it your daughter's not h--"

With the swiftness of a striking mountain renth, Stes gripped Nahr's broad throat in his long-fingered hand. The thinness of the Xaneer's arm belied the steel-banded muscles powering it.

Nahr gasped for breath and pawed at his employer's arm.

"You will not speak of my daughter. Ever. Is that understood?" Stes asked with iron-hard finality.

Nodding mutely, Nahr stared into the dark, slitted eyes of the creature holding his life in his hands.

"Good." Almost gently, Stes released his fingers.

Wheezing and coughing, Nahr collapsed to one knee.

"Now," Stes said firmly, "you will take us to this private field where Zilvan has taken his acolytes. For your own well-being, pray to the Creator that we arrive before they depart."

Delegating two Units to remove the cowed prisoners to the waiting Xaneeri ship, Stes marched outside towards the ancient electric cargo carrier Nahr had arranged for their transport. The sullen human moved rapidly ahead.

Scurrying to keep up, Subleader Gendin lowered his voice. "If Nahr reports what we're doing to the Jalaar authorities..."

"So much the worse for Nahr."

Gendin's mouth twitched. "As far as they know, our ship is a private liner. If they discover we're actually a military force, what shall we do?"

"As always, Subleader. We'll negotiate and explain and bribe. Once they hear why we're chasing Zilvan, they always shudder and look the other way." He glanced sidelong at his friend. "We obviously cannot fight our way out." After a few more paces, he said, "Relax. This is our best chance yet to catch them."

"We've said that before."

Stes scowled. "If we need to, we'll say it again. We've trailed these abominations across six star systems. If need be, we'll chase them across six more."

Hesitantly, Gendin said, "If we do capture them, what will you do about...Xallin."

Stes's expression darkened, but he did not lash out at his comrade as he had with the human. "She is young and impressionable. Even as a child, her thoughts drifted with the currents of the wind. Zilvan seduced her into his cult."

"But the Xaneeri Council has vowed to exterminate all who practice the 'Celebration of Life.' Most have already been eliminated."

Shying from the implications of those facts, Stes said, "They pollute their souls with their warped view of the Creator and Oneness. To hold ritual cannibalism as a valid means of achieving connection with the Universal Spirit..." Despite his soldier's discipline, the Xaneer Overleader and father shuddered. "Zilvan damns their souls for all eternity. We must stop them at all costs."

Refraining from a response, Gendin followed Nahr and Stes into the carrier.

With Nahr steering, the vehicle rumbled through the narrow streets of Jalaar. Fifteen minutes later, it reached the outskirts of this minor capital of a minor colony on a minor world. Ahead, the road stretched towards a flat horizon. Buildings thinned to an occasional farmstead.

The green-yellow landscape held no interest for Stes. His only concern lay with fulfilling the mission the Council had given him: retrieve Zilvan and his group, return them to Xaneer for trial and eventual execution. The poison of their outrageous ideas must not be permitted to contaminate the Xaneeri creed. No single individual could be permitted such power.

The perversity of the "Celebration of Life" had begun quietly. Isolated incidents here and there of citizens disappearing. Sometimes a badly decomposed corpse was found, mutilated the authorities assumed by the sacred tehlens which had free range of the cities and countryside.

When the numbers mounted, however, suspicions grew. Eventually, the secret leaked out as cult members sought to recruit others to their perverted ways. The Council wasted no time cracking down hard on the perpetrators of that obscene ritual. Selecting sacrifices, disemboweling them while chanting sacrilegiously to the Creator, consuming parts of the organs as a corrupted avenue to achieving Oneness... The Xaneeri people could not and would not tolerate such a travesty of their honored traditions and beliefs.

Most of the cultists had been rounded up and immediately slain after their very public trials. Exposing their distorted ideals had been deemed the only proper way to quell their disturbingly powerful influence on the young minds of their children.

Some leaders, however, more clever than most, realized their eventual fate and fled off-planet with whatever members they could smuggle with them. Teams such as the one Stes commanded had been dispatched to retrieve the heretics so they could suffer their appointed punishments.

To Stes's shame, most of those other soldiers had already accomplished their tasks. He and his team, however, had yet to catch the slippery Zilvan. More than once, his hide had nearly been snagged. Every time Stes and his Units had closed in on him, he had managed to squirm his way free.

The tip from Nahr had buoyed Stes's hopes. Zilvan had dashed those expectations by abandoning his weaker members to their lot. Decoys.

Stes curled a hand into a fist. To Zilvan such treachery came easily. To him, life and death had no real distinction. The Oneness which sustained the Xaneeri people meant to the outcast that all living creatures merely formed different aspects of the same entity. That to kill one individual held no more shame than clipping a claw. Matter could be transformed into energy and then back into matter. All one. No true distinctions. Immortality for all. To eat of another's temporary shell could not be murder. If all were aspects of the One and the One eternal, murder became a meaningless notion. Indeed, for Zilvan and his followers, the "Celebration of Life" stood as the pinnacle of proper affirmation of that Unity.

The cultists truly seemed incapable of understanding why any of their fellow citizens should view their outrageous actions with distaste or concern.

And his daughter, Xallin, mesmerized by the charismatic Zilvan, had sunk into those murky depths, defiling her oh-so-precious body, her mind, her very being.

Stes felt the cargo carrier slowing as they approached the outskirts of Calvet. Grimly, he stood as Nahr brought the vehicle to a halt.

Expressionlessly, Nahr turned in his seat and pointed. "The private field is half a kilometer that way. On the west side. Supposedly, the ship they purchased is stored there."

"Is it guarded?" Stes asked.

The human shrugged. "Don't know. I've never seen it. There'll be regular field security, of course. I can't let them see me with you. If you get caught, I'd end up in jail."

"Don't worry, Nahr," Stes said dryly. "You won't be in danger." Moving closer, he bored a clawed finger into the human's chest. "When we signal, though, be there soon. If we have to come searching for you..."

Nahr's nod was almost imperceptible.

As the Overleader left the carrier, Gendin signaled to the remaining troopers. Flipping down their mirrored tactical visors, the soldiers piled onto the street.

Skirting the perimeter of the town, the Xaneeri made good time. As they approached the landing field, Stes sub-vocalized a command to slow their pace. While he would not retreat from a confrontation with the human security force, he did not relish having to deal with the political repercussions of such an encounter. The consequences of a successful mission would be complicated enough to handle.

Creeping forward along a warehouse wall, they came within sight of the fenced field. Dialing up his magnification, Stes surveyed the cercrete.

Four small interstellar-capable ships, evenly spaced about the area, pointed skyward. The lengthening double shadows of the dual suns complicated the picture. Still, only moments passed before Stes spotted movement.

"Third ship from the left," he said, barely able to suppress his excitement. Almost instantly, his joy transformed into despair.

"They're already boarding," Gendin said.

"I can see that Subleader!" No! It couldn't be. Not again...

"Shall we attack?" Gendin suggested.

"We're supposed to take them alive," Stes ground out between his pointed teeth. Disabling the ship was not an option, either. A vessel designed to traverse the sleeting energy of jump holes would be unfazed by anything less than a Class V laser cannon.

"They're escaping." Uncharacteristic desperation laced Gendin's anguished voice.

For once, Stes chose to ignore that break in discipline.

One by one, the cultists entered the portal from the spidery gantry. Barely six of the estimated three dozen targets remained in the clear.

A strangled snarl escaped Stes's throat. Snapping his laser rifle to his shoulder, he flipped up his visor and peered through the more powerful rifle 'scope. The electronics focused on the targets, reading off distance and elevation as it settled in.

"He's still outside," Stes said, his voice a coiled spring of tension and anger.

Wisely, his subordinate offered no suggestion.

Though the 'scope compensated somewhat for heat and atmospheric distortion, the image revealing the object of Stes's quest wavered in his rectangular window into space. Solicitously, the diminutive renegade helped his devotees enter the ship which would spirit them away to yet another temporary refuge.

How many victims were the cultists leaving behind this time? How many more societies would they soil with their bizarre values? How many more times would they avoid the righteous wrath of their society and their pursuers?

Stes clenched his jaw.

The distance to Zilvan lay easily within his weapon's parameters. Simply lock in the target and pull the trigger and the beast who had led his daughter into dishonor would cease to exist.

Almost without realizing it, Stes slipped his index finger through the trigger guard. From long training and habit, he activated the targeting system. Silently, automatically, the tool that had become almost an extension of himself performed its duties.

Three more followers remained outside. One by one, the first two passed in front of Zilvan, obscuring his figure. As the last outlaw reached the cult leader, they paused and gazed out across the city and planet they would soon leave forever.

As that last fugitive turned and Zilvan slipped an arm over her shoulder, Stes felt his six-chambered heart stutter.

Xallin.

His daughter. In the embrace of a monster. The offspring he had helped deliver so long -- and so short -- a time ago. The part of himself he had created with his wife. The infant then toddler then young adult he had guided and nurtured, loved and disciplined. His literal bid for life beyond death. Standing there, smiling, laughing, as Zilvan whispered in her ear.

Stes's body tensed like a wire about to snap. Before he could change his mind, he shifted his weapon a fraction of a degree. With barely a hesitation, his rifle fixed on the new target. A muscle in his hand quivered. A barely visible beam of violent energy leaped across the distance with almost instantaneous speed.

One moment his daughter stood, alive and vibrant and aware. The next, a cauterized hole bored through her chest. Her body remained vertical a second or two longer before it realized it was dead. Then it collapsed on the platform, a hollow container of mere matter.

Stes's gaze and his grip on his weapon never wavered.

Surprised, alarmed, frozen, Zilvan scanned the cluttered environment for the location of the assassin. Briefly, he glanced at his deceased follower. Control reasserted itself, and he dove through the portal. Without delay, the hatch closed, sealing out both the corpse and the soldiers who had tracked him down...again.

A long breath escaped Stes. Like a deflating balloon, he slumped to the ground. Time crawled past with agonizing slowness.

When he raised his gaze, Gendin knelt beside him, a hand resting lightly on his leader's arm.

His subordinate -- his friend -- searched his face, nodded once, then stood.

The other soldiers held back, saying nothing as they powered down their tactical systems.

Xallin was no more. He had disobeyed his orders and killed his daughter. Yet what choice had he had? The stain of her actions and beliefs had permeated her soul like dirty oil into virgin wood. Never could the two be separated. Only by destroying the container would the two be freed from each other and the latter cleansed.

Burying the fire consuming his heart, Stes shoved himself erect. One by one, he fixed the gaze of each of his soldiers. When at last he spoke, no trace of emotion colored his words.

"Zilvan still lives. We'll follow him as we have before. Next time, we'll capture him. By the Creator, we will. He will not escape justice. He will not."

As his enemy's ship lifted from the cercrete on its pillar of twisted and funneled energy, Stes watched it lift higher and faster until at last it disappeared from view in the encroaching shadow of night.

In his mind, however, it lingered still, frozen in a horrific moment of time when he gave all he could in his love for his daughter.

"You won't escape," he whispered to himself. "You won't."