Tyrmia Chapter 30

[Ken McConnell]

Korre awoke with his face flat against the dirt and his mouth open. He had drooled in a puddle and the wet mud created a cold sensation on his cheek. His eyes batted open and he looked around. His arms and legs were still anchored to the ground just as tightly as the night before. He pulled at them each in turn, trying to find a weakness in his captor’s methods but alas he could not.
He could sense movement behind him and lifted his head to turn and face the camp fire. Tyrmian women were tending to the fire and cooking something that smelled horrible. He didn’t realize that they even used fires to cook their meat. Whatever they were making it was revolting to his refined sense of smell.
“Good morning Commander Korre,” a woman’s voice said.
Korre turned his head back around and tried to look up. It was the white alien woman again. Only this time she was clean and radiant in the morning sunlight. He was taken aback by her beauty and her nakedness. Why did she insist on not wearing clothes? It was shameful and deviant. A part of him was grateful, but he tried to suppress those carnal feelings.
“Not from my point of view,” he replied, looking away from her shining skin.
Zerdy sat down beside him, taking care to keep herself turned away and her arms around her legs to cover her breasts. “You are all that is left of your company. Your men fought bravely but we had the element of surprise.”
Korre looked back at her and focused on her alien blue eyes.
“Why didn’t you kill me, too?” he asked.
“Because I need you to take me back to your side of the mountain,” the woman said.
Korre looked confused. Why would she want to come back with him? She was clearly comfortable living with these savages.
“Why?”
She looked away and relaxed her grip on her legs. “I need to see for myself how advanced your people are. It will help me to organize these tribes to more effectively counter your advances.”
It was risky telling him why she wanted to go back, but she realized he was smart enough to have figured it out on his own.
“Why do you care about these savages? You are not even from this world.”
She looked down at him and smiled. “That is correct, I am not from this world. And neither are you. We live amongst the stars in vast societies that were once at war with each other. But that war is over and now the Votainions and the humans live together in peace and we have great interest in maintaining the peace on the worlds we have infected. Like this one.”
Korre tried to understand but what she was saying was too fantastical for him to grasp. He had no knowledge of her world but he knew everything about his. Kosgren was the home to the voton dynasty and they were the rulers and keepers of the land. If her people had an interest in this world, they would meet with great resistance from his people.
“This planet is ours. You have no right to tell us what to do. We will fight your people to the death to defend our land,” Korre said.
She ran her hands through his reddish hair and then examined the shiny rank emblem on his collar.
“Your people did not evolve on this world. Your ancestors were stranded here along with mine a long time ago. Mortal enemies forced to survive on an alien planet. They must have done pretty good for themselves, judging from your clothes and your weapons.” She reached for a rifle off to her side and brought it up to examine it.
It was a bolt action, rim fired projectile weapon with a riffled barrel and a wooden stock. The construction was simple and no doubt reliable. It was no different than the rifles that her ancestors had made on many worlds in the galaxy.
“Tell me commander, do you have air travel yet?”
He looked at her oddly, as if he did not expect her to know of such things.
“No,” he lied. She could not know how far they had come. It was a state secret and only a select few were aware that the Army was developing weapons for the sky.
She racked the bolt back and chambered a round. Then she pointed the rifle at some far away item in the jungle and pulled the trigger. The sound echoed in the forest and scared the natives. A vurhan warrior scurried away and Korre could hear him come back and drop a colored bird to the ground beside the woman. She cleared the weapon and set it down in the dirt beside her. The bird was blue and green, he did not recognize what species it was. She offered it to a Tyrmian woman who took it proudly away presumably to cook and eat it.
“Looks like the range is about three hundred meters. Not bad. But I can better with mine.”
She took out the small pistol that he had collected from the crash site. It came alive in her tiny hand with glowing lights and she pointed it up into the tops of the trees. He could see where she was aiming and it was clearly beyond the closest tree tops. There was a bird circling high above a tree that was so far away, he could barely make out that it was a bird. She pulled the trigger and a flash of light burst forth and took down the bird. It fell like a rock to the jungle floor too far away to hear.
She looked back down at him and grinned. Her smile was radiant.
“Not bad for a pistol, eh?”
“How does that thing work?” he asked.
“It’s a bit complicated. But it only works for me. Your engineers won’t be able to make much sense of it. All of my equipment is far more advanced than anything your people have even dreamed about. My plane could dance among the stars and my weapons can kill with light. Don’t underestimate me, or my followers commander or you will be killed as easily as that bird.”
He nodded as best he could with his head to the ground. She stood up and moved out of his vision with her rifle and her hand gun. She came back a few minutes later with some food and set it down beside his face. He could not reach it and he figured that she was toying with him. But she then proceeded to cut his hands and feet free from the stakes.
He pulled his arms and legs in and slowly sat up. Able to see around the camp for the first time, he noticed two vurhan warriors were watching him closely. They both held loaded rifles and had their own weapons on them. There were older Tyrmian women and a few children cleaning up after the morning meal near the fire. The camp was otherwise abandoned.
He saw the blond woman sitting with what looked like a vurhan chief and a Tyrmian male. They were watching him as they spoke, as if they were deciding his fate. He picked up the food she had given him and smelled it. It must have been what they were cooking earlier. It still smelled horrible to him, but he was hungry and grateful to be free so he ate the food. It tasted bland to him, but it was tolerable. He watched his guards and wondered it he could wrestle a rifle away from one. He might have time to get off a few shot at the nearest savages, but then where would he go? The jungle was hot and inhospitable; he would not get far before they tracked him down and slit his throat.
Eventually the woman came back and sat down cross legged in the dirt with him. He did his best to avert his eyes from her nakedness. She seemed to be aware of this but did nothing to cover herself. Maybe they did not wear clothing in space, he thought.
“We are retrieving your gear from the forest. When I’ve had time to inspect it, we will pack for our journey back through the mountains. You will come with us. If you try and escape, we will kill you as quickly as you murdered this tribe.”
“I understand. Do you have a name? What do they call you where you com from?”
She looked at him again like he had spoken out of turn.
“My name is Szeredy Terence You may call me Zerdy.”
He looked at her eyes again. They were unnaturally blue. “Greetings Zerdy. I am Commander Korre from the Royal Defense Force of Kosgren. Serial number four, eight, seven, two, two, one.”
He looked away again, refusing to stare at her body. She moved until he could see her again.
“Am I that ugly that you can not look at me Commander Korre?”
He shook his head and put down the bark plate. It was empty.
“Why must you be uncovered like these savages?” Korre asked, his eyes averted from hers again.
#

Zerdy’s face reddened. She had not realized a Votainion male could be offended by female nudity. That would never have bothered a line officer of the Empire. Quite the reverse in fact, she would have thought that he would have preferred her nude. It was her position of power in the tribe that would have most offended a true Votainion officer. This man was not a Votainion. She had to keep reminding herself that. He was from a different culture and he had a quaint, almost human sense of honor. For the first time since going native, she felt naked.
Zerdy got up and walked away, without saying anything more to the voton. She wanted to go back into her hut and cover herself with animal firs. But the Tyrmians did not wear clothing and there was nothing in her hut but loose pelts that would not cover her completely. She stood alone by the edge of her hut as a new commotion came from the other side of the camp. The vurhan warriors had returned with the voton equipment.
She watched them carefully as they brought the strange gear into camp and set it down carefully. They had no idea what any of it did. After they were finished, she moved to to the piles of metal devices and canvas bags. It was immediately apparent how advanced the votons were by looking at their gear. They had manufactured items some of which were mass produced, like uniform items and weapons. The most sophisticated items looked like they were custom designed or were perhaps prototypes. This indicated to Zerdy that their technology was in flux and perhaps advancing quicker than they could develop factories to produce it.
There were two magnetic coiled devices that she assumed were for finding metal. Primitive, but effective. Various sizes of rifle and hand guns, boxes of ammunition and what she assumed was explosives. The destructive power of the field army. There were portable metal stoves and various cooking items, including spices and herbs presumably from the far side of the mountains. An army travelled on its stomach and these troops were pretty well fed.
What intrigued her the most were the small metal boxes hooked to what looked like a hand cranked power source. She guessed they were early radio transmitters, but communications history was not something she had ever studied. The small brass key, headphones and various wires leading to and from the rectangular box were beautiful in their elaborate facades. Usually such equipment was clean and simple in design so that any soldier could be trained to use it. But this radio and much of the other technical equipment had elaborate facades with detailed engravings. This suggested to her that the votons were specializing to a degree that the Votainions had never done. It was apparent to her that this expedition even had Engineers traveling with them to operate these complicated devices.
She set about distributing the cooking hardware to the Tyrmian females. She would have to teach them how to use the pots and pans, but it was something she knew they could get used to using. A few simple explanations were needed for some of the devices, but the females seemed appreciative to receive the unexpected gifts.
Then she had the vurhan warriors divvy up the rifles and ammunition. Her first order of business was to teach them how to fight with the newly acquired rifles. But first she needed to prevent the voton commander from watching. She walked back over to where he was sitting. He tried not to look at her directly as she addressed him.
“Commander, your equipment is quite impressive. I commend your Engineers for their obvious technical abilities,” she said.
Korre glances up at her briefly. He was not used to being complimented by a savage woman.
“What are you going to do with me Zerdy?” She kneeled down before him to look into his deep, black eyes.
“I’m going to put you in a hut and tie you back down. Then I’m going to teach these savages how to shoot with your rifles and how to attack your troops in such a manner that will make our defeat of your men look like child’s play. Then we will embark on our journey through the mountains.”
“What if I refuse to go with you?”
“You will be killed, of course,” she said, as if she were discussing the simple rules of a card game.
“If you cooperate, you will live to see your homeland again and I will be your prize. Your mission will be judged a success, even at the cost of your entire company. For I alone posses more technical knowledge than all your best Engineers combined.”
Korre looked at her like she were crazy. “I don’t understand why you would come back with me and risk imprisonment. Because that is what awaits you there.”
“Perhaps. But sooner or later, your leaders will realize that they can learn much from me and I will be far more valuable to them as an Engineer.”
Korre scoffed at the mere suggestion that a woman could be an Engineer.
“You will be tortured and killed or at best banished to prison. In any case, you will never return to this god forsaken jungle.”
Zerdy looked around at the camp and its occupants. She would miss it and the people she had grown to respect and admire. But she had to go back with him. If she didn’t make the journey now, she knew she might never get the chance to again. She knew that Korre could protect her if he saw fit. Something about his response to her so far, his stolen glances, his refusal to look at her naked body, suggested to her that he was an honorable man. That he might even harbor feelings towards her, feelings that would not allow her to be imprisoned. She realized that she might be risking her life on the possibility that one voton man might fall in love with her, however tenuous that possibility was, it was her last resort.
“I want you to present me to your Emperor. I will promise to show him the technology that will help your people control this planet in ways that you can not now imagine. All I ask in return is that you leave these jungles and the people in them alone.”
Korre looked at her again with suspicion. “The Emperor will laugh at you and send you to the gallows and my career as an officer will be over. No thanks.”
He turned away again, after stealing another glance at her breasts. Zerdy grabbed his chin and forces him to look her in the eyes.
“If you present me to your Emperor, I will let you have me. I will be yours and yours alone.”
Korre took her hand from his face. She was warm and soft, like the finest women of the court. Women that he might some day have the opportunity to be with if he were to return with the knowledge she claimed to have. He held her white hand in his soft blue palm and fell helplessly into her crystal blue eyes. She was so beautiful and he was so unworthy of such a gift from the gods. He realized in that moment that he would do anything for her. Anything. He kissed the back of her hand and she slowly withdrew it. He was hers and she knew it.

[Ken McConnell]

The power of love can move mountains, or at least get you want you want on the other side of the mountains.