Little Chapel of Terrors

The invader settled neatly onto the lawn of the biggest building in the city. It wasn’t a neat landing. There were a lot of trees blocking the way. The disrupter cannon had taken care of that problem but a muddy fog of organic dust now hung suspended over the area.

The surveillance satellites had picked up a sign that identified the buildings as the Nueces County Courthouse. A somewhat charmingly useless system of open waterworks enclosed the building. The whole thing was surrounded by a seaside-city, which, for some unfathomable reason, had been named after the executed body of some ancient criminal. It was a preposterous thing to do for even such a silly race as this.

On his own world the project commander had some experience with the work of these primitive slave societies. He was almost impressed at what these creatures had managed to pull off with their hydrocarbon power sources. It was an unexpected accomplishment for slave stock. Undoubtedly, something which would be factored into their sale price.

"Should I fire the static field, Commander?" his Number Two inquired.

"No, I think the orbital projectors will have settled them down, Bekkar. What military capability they had has already been decimated. We are still quite a bit over budget on this operation, and I’m counting on the bonus to cover my thirtieth wife’s severance stipend. I’m sure light tactical weapons will be sufficient."

"Disembark the packers," Bekkar bellowed, and the troop doors slid open.

A few seconds later, the first man out staggered slowly backward into the ready-room. A small bouquet of feathers sprouted just beneath his chin. Two more arrows followed him back through the door, one of which pinned a kneecap on the man in back of him.

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"Archers, hold fire."

The ten archers carried everything from English longbows to high-tech compounds and laser-sighted crossbows. They were split into two squads. Their commander was the eleventh archer, a woman dressed in dark tanned chamois with a short Turkish recurve. She set a four-bladed hunting arrow back in its quiver at her left hip. A hand-and-half battle sword lay within easy reach across her back.

"I count six down, Janna," a dark-bearded young man wrapped in a Twelfth-Century Saracen burnoose glassed the landing site with a cheap pair of fold-up opera glasses. "No activity at the door. Looks like a lot of moving shadows back inside though."

"Wonder why they didn’t try to shock us first?" She made a short chopping gesture with here right hand.

Off in the dark, four shadows caught her signal and moved off through the fog. Two archers shouldered crossbows to cover the lander’s door. The shadows disappeared somewhere on either side of the lander.

A turret on the side of the machine slapped open and a spidery cone of green glassy threads shot out into the air.

"Everybody down and safety weapons," Janna yelled. "Looks like we’re going to be stuck here for a minute." She sat down and braced back to back with the Saracen.

"If they missed...," he hissed pulling a .40 caliber Glock from his sash. Janna already held its twin in her right hand. Her left held a razor edged Japanese tanto.

"Yeah well, then it’ll be more than a minute," she growled.

They both went rigid as the turret activated, paralyzing everything with a brain function higher than that of an annelid worm, for almost a kilometer around.

The dark body of a female cardinal dropped out of the air, her deadly fall cushioned in the Saracen’s lap.

Everything was quiet for a moment, and then the lander’s doorway once again erupted with the red turbaned packers. They were followed out by a bulky man yelling words that would be obscene regardless of language.

The packers carried long wands. Their driver was not happy with their progress and slapped several of them with his own wand. The effect was instantaneous if not lethal. They shrieked like men used to screaming, and stampeded in a more-or-less forwardly direction with as much speed as they could make considering the slippery footing.

The ground was covered with the paralyzed bodies of their attackers. They had fallen in oddly disturbing positions, suggestive of tightly coiled springs.

A squad leader cautiously examined a pair that had fallen back to back at the center of more than a dozen men and women with the soft hands and bodies of those who achieve goals with their minds, rather than their backs.

"These do not look like slave stock my Bekkar," a squad leader observed nervously as he fell to one knee in front of the officer.

"Nonsense, they are insensible animals and they have struck at you with nothing more than feathered sticks. Your men have softened and become cowards," the Bekkar snarled. "You degrade the name of the Ha Ni San in the stars." He kicked the man squarely in the face, shattering his jaw.

"You will all purify yourselves with flowing blood at the Chapel of Protracted Contrition this very evening."

But it was not to be.

At that moment four shadows cast a fisherman’s bait net across the delicate crystalline web projecting from the side of the landing craft. Behind them seven turbaned bodies lay in various stages of unconsciousness. Four more had gone forward to the more complete accounting.

"Jack! you’re getting sloppy on your punches again. Keep your elbows in tighter."

The man grinned, bowing slightly to the wiry black woman on his right. "Yes, Sensei," he whispered.

The net tangled in the crystal spines, which shattered as they all threw their weight on the ropes. Whatever the device was it shattered with the screams of a catfight at midnight.

Two hundred meters away, a very annoyed lady Cardinal roused and launched herself brutally straight into the surprised face of the Bekkar. She knocked his turban off but Janna punched two bullets in his chest before it could touch the ground.

The rest of his team died before the Cardinal reached the sanctuary of the fountains.

There would be no gory groveling in the Little Chapel of Night Terrors for this bunch: not that evening or any other.

The door of the lander was dialing closed, but not quite fast enough. A smoking coffee can sailed through the opening just as the door sealed.

"merde," Janna swore. "I was hoping...."

"Oh yeah, you got that right," the Saracen chuckled. "Let’s just give this a moment."

The lander lifted quietly off the ground some five meters and slowly hovered, bobbing erratically on its own axis.

Jack watched from the other side of the machine. He was holding an apple with a very neat round hole through the center. He took a bite of what was left as the machine continued to drift upward. The rest of the apple blocked an air intake on the side of the lander.

And then the door opened, billowing a completely evil greenish smoke along with choking aliens who slammed down hard on the concrete now some sixty meters below.

The Saracen grinned, as he dropped the opera glasses to his chest. "Jack’s been fermenting that stink bomb for months," he said, nodding appreciatively. Chile-fed Chihuahua.

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"Em...ah, Eminence," The speaker’s voice quavered. Subaltern BesAl was obviously disinclined to his present duty.

"Yes," Fleet Commander ArSo Ba answered warily, biting off the tails of each word as though he might stop them in midair. Previous reports of the pacification process had been anything but encouraging. Things were going far too slow–-threatening the bottom line of his budget.

"We have contact with Fireship Fontiq’BA"

"Ah, yes commanded ably by my nephew O’Ssi Saa’BA" The commander seemed relieved. "Perhaps we can get this operation back in the black now."

The subaltern seemed anything but assured of that fact.

"And what does my nephew have to report on the progress of the invasion crews."

"He does not exactly report, your Eminence."

The commander’s face fell as he began a slow turn towards the subaltern who had suddenly slid back towards the entrance. "Not exactly?"

"An intercom channel was opened to our navigator.

"And, yes?"

"The speaker was not your nephew."

"No. That would be his comm officer," the Eminence said. Wouldn’t it?"

"Yes sir, normally that might be expected, but…"

"Oh what, man?"

"The speaker was one of the slave tribes below," the subaltern rushed on bleakly. "A female creature calling itself, Janna."

The fleet commander’s face was hard to read at that moment. "They give their females names?" It seemed to the subaltern as though the Fleet-Commander had just been told that pigs took wing and danced in the air.

"Yes sir. They seem to. And um...well, your nephew’s ship has been taken over by these creatures," the subaltern rushed on. "They seem to have commandeered one of the landers."

Suddenly the ship reeled and tossed them both into bulkhead and deck, not necessarily in that order.

The fleet-commander looked up, stunned. Alarms announced fire, smoke, and then death. In the background the deeper more troubling howl of fast moving air declared hull integrity damage. The dull thud of pressure doors slamming into place punctuated that theory.

"That’s the other thing, sir," he said. "They have opened fire on us and several other fleet ships have sustained damage. Two have been completely hulled."

The commander reeled against the opposite bulkhead as another shock went through the ship. "This is completely without precedence...cannot be allowed."

"What happened to the shielding fields?"

"But Fleet-Commander, you said they wouldn’t be needed and would exceed budget."

The Commander never had the opportunity to consider such niceties as the next volley from his nephew’s ship completely cored the vessel sending his rapidly fizzling corpse in the general direction of Capella.