Dissident

by Lisa Beeson

  He knew he was going to die. She could see it in his eyes. He was prepared to do it for her – for Malu. Sennah’s heart shattered in her chest as tears filled her eyes, she couldn’t breathe, it was all too much. They had been so close to making it to Oan, and now it was all falling apart. But she tilted her head in assent. She had to somehow endure it. She had to live for Vrahnon, for Malu, for all those who perished at the temple. She could not let it be in vain.

  Sounds of destruction and distress from the throng outside of the alley meant the Nahullo must be close.

  “You can do this, neh’la. You have to.” Vrahnon placed a quick, fierce kiss on her forehead. “Go! Now!” He held the bundle as if he was holding her, then dashed out of the alley; knocking things over to make sure he attracted attention.

  Sennah took a brief moment to gather her courage then made to dash out of the other side of the alley. But before she could, Darius grabbed her arm to stop her, while saying something in his native tongue.

  Sennah shook him off. “Go to docks,” she said in Common, trying to keep it simple, hoping he could understand. She had tried to work with him on expanding his vocabulary, but they hadn’t had enough time to make a lot of progress with his slower capacity to learn.

  He made that strange back and forth motion with his head, signaling that he disagreed. “No, Sen. Free now.” He pointed to his torque, and mimicked running. He was trying to tell her it was their chance to run away and be free. He did not understand what was really going on.

  “No. You are free. I must go to the docks,” she insisted in frustration.

  Trying to run again, he grabbed ahold of her once more, frustrated that she did not seem to understand him. He saw her as a very young Gaian child and he would not let her go off on her own.

  Their lives were in jeopardy, she could not be delayed any longer. Grasping the front of his cloak, she pulled him down to his knees and placed her hands on the sides of his face. Connecting their xjaasai she communicated with him the same way she would have with Ruhk. Using images and emotions, she explained who and what she was, why she was running, and impressed the immediate danger they were in. She then showed him images of him being free to run and that he should use his torque as a cover. Then she infused the image of her running to dock 33 before the last shipment run with great urgency. Willing him to have the capacity to understand, she needed him to understand for both their sakes.

  When she was done, she disconnected their xjaasai and ran away as fast as she could. Darius was too shocked by what she had just done to stop her again.

  Following the map in her head, she weaved through the legs of the crowd, squeezing through small spaces no one else could. She climbed up another set of switchback stairs back to the higher levels towards the docks. Only a few beings tried to grab her as she passed by, mistaking her for a runaway slave or a thief, but she was too quick and wily for them. She did not sift, because she could not afford to pass out from the energy drain. However, the chaos of the colorful market worked in her favor. The attention of the patrons and tourists were on the attractions, trained exotic creatures, blaring music and adverts, and QuantumViews showing galactic reports and various entertainments.

  Halfway to the docks, the crowd had come to a complete stop. Sennah climbed up a store’s awning to see what the holdup was and saw a roadblock ahead. It was swarming with Anasaru soldiers. They were trying to corral the crowds away from the docks. She could tell they were local Daizan by their size and the design of their armor.

  They had been betrayed. How else would the Anasaru know that they would be here now, trying to get off world?

  Images of Malu and Ubrim appeared on the large QuantumView above the crowd, drawing her attention. The ticker at the bottom of their images was condemning them and painting them as traitors. Sennah was completely oblivious to the whine of a Sentinel Scanner until it whizzed right by her as she continued to read. Her scalp tingling in apprehension, she immediately dropped down to the ground, but it was too late. Due to her invisible xjaasa, the tech pinned her as an anomaly, and the scanners were now on her trail. The Nahullo would be on her any minute.

  Fear seizing her lungs, she forced her numb legs to run. Going in any direction open to her except towards the docks, not only because of the roadblocks, but also because Oan’s pilot would be compromised. There would be no more deaths on her account.

  Running blindly she hoped to get lost in the warren of the market, but the whine of the Sentinels were never far behind. More whines from different directions came searching, called by the trace pinned on her.

  Turning down a slim alley, she found her way blocked by a dead end. The only way open to her was up. Placing her hands and feet against the walls of the neighboring buildings, she shimmied her way up into the open window of a small living unit. Fortunately, it was empty, so she was able to run through unimpeded, locking the door behind her.

  Making her way down and out of the back of the building, she followed the flow of the foot traffic. Keeping her head down and blending into the mass of beings. She forced her mind to think only of going forward, and not the fact that her Oan was now lost to her. How could she ever get to him now?

  The affected voice of some Anu’Kainat bureaucrat blared over the roar of the crowd gathered around a large empty square. Sennah tried to pass around the edge of curious beings, but as she got closer, she felt the undeniable pull of the blood bond.

  Her heart pounded in her chest. Vrahnon was in the square. The Nahullo must have caught him.

  The glow of an enormous QuantumView filtered down through the mass of bodies as Sennah made her way through the crowd. She wove through and around their legs until she was able to see Vrahnon, bound, bloody, and battered in the middle of the square. A Nahullo soldier was holding him by a fierce grip on his hair, while another was shouting at him in heavily accented Common.

  With their helmets melded back into their armor, Sennah was able to see their braided hair and tattoos on the shaved sides of their heads, and the inky black teeth characteristic of Nahullo warriors.

  Rysura had told her that their stained teeth were from a black paste, made from fungi grown in the mines of Berym. They rubbed it on their gums to heighten their senses, enhance their strength, and numb any shred of empathy they possessed. It made them the perfect war machines and assassins.

  Sennah shivered despite the heat of the bodies pressed close around her.

  Where were the rest of the Pheryn Nas, she wondered. There had been eight of them.

  The QuantumView above began showing a live feed of the scene, broadcasting it all across Anu.

  “Where is the abomination?” the Nahullo with bright orange hair shouted. His deep resonant voice, enhanced by the tech in his armor, easily projected over the jeers of the crowd.

  Vrahnon looked up at him with pure contempt, standing proud and defiant like the Magrah soldier he was. The Nahullo backhanded him across the face with a vicious blow. “Answer me, filth. Or die for your silence!”

  Vrahnon knew she was nearby for he must feel the blood bond as she did, but he in no way betrayed her – not even a glance to where he must feel her presence.

  He spit blood onto the ground at the Nahullo’s feet, before straightening and staring up defiantly once more. “I am prepared to die for the future Magira of my race. The child will live to bring down this farce of a galactic hegemony!”

  The crowd gasped at his audacity to speak of the Anu’Kainat in such a way. The Daizan in the crowd were livid at his claim that the title of Magira would be given to a crossbred abomination – their shocked gasps quickly turned to malicious curses. They felt betrayed that the Magirial family would try to corrupt the hierarchy of their Higher Race with such base abominable filth as her.

  They did not even know her and they instinctually abhorred her. Sennah could not understand it. Her senses were drowning in the miasma of their hatred – her chest constricting and skin tightening with their rancor and disgust that
clung to her like dirt. For the first time in her life, she felt ashamed for what she was.

  She knew Vrahnon was trying to tell her to get away from there, but she could not force her feet to move.

  An imperious voice proclaimed from the QuantumView: “Vrahnon sem Utyr...”

  Sennah glanced up and saw that it was Manok Prai, the Ayan Consul. “As with your brother and sister, you are hereby stripped of your title and are sentenced to death for conspiring against the Anu’Kainat and concealing the product of an illegal mating between a Daizan and an Ayan.”

  The crowd cheered.

  Sennah was unwilling to process the official death sentence of her mother and uncles. Instead, she stubbornly focused her mind on wondering why the Ayan Consul was announcing the official judgement and not the Grand Arbiter of the Judicial Synod. Why was no one questioning this break in official protocol?

  The feed switched to a view of Malu and Ubrim. Stripped naked and wrists bound, they were being led up the stairs of the Judicial Hall in Esharet, flanked by armed Anasaru soldiers. The mob at the bottom of the steps were hurling curses and refuse at them.

  Tears slid down Sennah’s cheeks as she witnessed Malu retain her regal grace as she met her dire fate. She would not let their ignorance and hate chip away at her dignity. A Magira did not falter. Ubrim stood tall beside her, while trying to shield her from the worst of the projectile refuse.

  All of this was happening because Malu and her uncles had concealed her existence. It was all her fault.

  As they climbed, the Nahullo with the orange hair took Vrahnon’s domen brace from his wrist and ripped off his clothes, leaving him as naked and vulnerable as his siblings. However, like his siblings, he did not let them strip him of his dignity. He knew that the Anu’Kainat had to bring the Daizan Royals low to show the masses that they were nothing more than criminals worthy of derision. So Vrahnon stood tall and proud despite their best efforts, and somehow reflected the shame back onto the crowd for doing this to him.

  When Malu and Ubrim reached the top of the stairs, the Judicial Synod awaited them, along with the Consuls and other various bureaucrats and dignitaries. However, Sennah noticed that someone other than her grandfather now wore the symbol of the Daizan Consul.

  When the Anasaru soldiers roughly turned Malu and Ubrim to face the crowd, Consul Prai stepped forward, his voice echoing through billions of QuatumViews across the galaxy. “No being is higher than the laws put in place to guide and protect races of Anu. We cannot tolerate the blatant disregard of the Peace Accords, even by the future Daizan Sovereign.

  “Bezahn sem Yula has lost his position as the Daizan Consul, for having the audacity to defend his daughter’s perfidious actions.”

  The crowds cheered.

  “Because the Magira was unaware of her children’s deceit, and adamantly does not condone their treasonous actions, she will be allowed to remain in power for the duration of her life under the strict observation of the Anu’Kainat. Nevertheless, we must cull the cancer of dissention in her line. With the deaths of these traitors and the mandated sterilization of her other two sons, the Utyr line will be erased, and another, more loyal, dynasty will rise in its place.”

  The crowds, in both Esharet and the Malethian Marketplace, cheered the fall of her family line – which had remained unbroken since the first Magira. The blood of the Mother will be wiped from existence to the sound of applause.

  Consul Prai made a quick motion to one of the soldiers standing nearby Ubrim, and with a swift flick of his plasma blade Ubrim’s head detached cleanly from his shoulders and rolled down the stairs to the awaiting mob.

  “NO!” Sennah screamed, unable to suppress her horror.

  An enormous hand encircled her neck and lifted her high above the crowd. Her feet kicked madly in the air in panic as she tried in vain to pry the gloved fingers away from her windpipe. The servient-torque seemed to be the only thing keeping him from crushing her neck.

  “I have the abomination!” the Nahullo soldier shouted for all to hear, waving her around like a ragdoll in his massive hand.

  The crowd quieted in curiosity, making the shrill whine of the Sentinel Scanners that had tracked her down audible in the air above them.

  “Sennah, no!” Vrahnon roared in anguish. His heartbroken eyes screaming: why didn’t you run?

  The Nahullo soldier walked to the center of the square and turned in a slow circle so all could see the abomination flailing and fiercely trying to fight her way out of his cruel grasp. Constricted grunts and squeals were the only sounds able to escape her ravaged throat.

  Vrahnon lurched to help her, but the white-haired Nahullo holding his hair punched him in the side, doubling him over.

  The orange-haired Nahullo used Vrahnon’s domen brace to bind Sennah’s wrists and ankles, and silenced her by immobilizing her vocal cords.

  No longer able to kick her legs, her hands still tore at the giant’s gloved fingers, trying to ease the pressure around her neck. She would never stop fighting. She had to survive.

  The crowd went silent, all of them trying to get a look at the abomination. All those condemning, hateful eyes focused solely on her were unbearable. Sennah sensed their confusion. The young child before them resembled a lowly Gaian slave, not the monstrous crossbreed of two Higher Races they expected.

  Consul Prai’s image appeared superimposed in the corner of the feed showing a close up of her squirming, grimacing form. “Do not believe in the lies these traitors cloaked the abomination in. It is only a clever disguise to play on your sympathies.”

  The feed switched to a still holo-image of her from before she was given the disguising rune. Someone from the temple – most likely a Karno plant – had taken it without her knowledge.

  Her pale pearlescent hair was long, her eyes opalescent, and her dark Daizan skin had an Ayan’s golden sheen. Her face was screwed up in a fierce scowl and her little hands were clenched in anger.

  Sennah knew exactly when that image had been taken. No one in the crowd would know that she had been acting like the evil Romorii bandit king in her recounting of the Taltósian epic of Beylal, which she had memorized for the entertainment of the Sages and acolytes. All they saw was a fearsome, hateful child.

  “This is its true appearance,” Consul Prai’s voice intoned, and the crowd let out another startled gasp. Her appearance was so alien to them that it made it easy to see her as “other” and not worthy of empathy or consideration. Both the Daizan in the market and the Ayans in Esharet looked on in disgust, seeing only the features they thought as inferior perversions of the purity of their great races.

  “Let us not be blinded by the unprecedented anomaly of this abomination’s existence. Let us instead think upon the grievous sins wreaked on the innocents of both Higher Races during the last Galactic War – sins that necessitated the laws against such fatal unions.

  “The Peace Accords must be adhered to for the continued prosperity of Anu. No more lives must be lost in the hopes of creating more abominations.”

  The crowds roared in agreement. No one wanted to revisit the atrocities committed during the Galactic War. What were the lives of a few disloyal sovereigns to continue the hard won peace of the races?

  Consul Prai knew how to manipulate the minds of the masses with an expert’s skill. In the time it had taken Sennah and Vrahnon to travel from the temple to the market, the Consul had somehow poisoned the hearts and minds of the people against the future Magira of Greater Emuria. And in that moment, Sennah knew that the Ayan Consul’s venture to destabilize the Daizan sovereignty was not his only goal. Looking at the cowed expression of the new Daizan Consul, Sennah knew that Emuria was only the beginning.

  Malu stepped forward, fighting against the grasp of the Anasaru soldier behind her. “My daughter is not an abomination! She is a beautiful, kind, and intelligent child created by love. And she is worthy of life as much as any other. She is the future of Anu. She will be the one to bring the peace and prosperit
y you seek, not the tyrants that wish to strip the powers of the races and enslave us all! Consul Prai only wishes to depose m-” The swift stroke of a plasma blade silenced her dissident voice forever.

  The crowd cheered.

  Sennah’s silent scream reverberated into the Aethos as an essential part of her was eviscerated with the severing of her mother’s head, bringing everyone around her to their knees.

  The dissociative numbness of shock took over as something dark and wrathful awoke inside her – swelling and expanding to fill the void left by her Malu’s death.

  They had taken everything from her so she would take everything from them. She would not be powerless to save what was hers ever again.

  Sennah took the strength from the brutal giant still on his knees behind her. Making his power her own and ignoring his pitiful screams as he had ignored hers. Taking until he was nothing but a limp pile on the ground. The feeling was so unbelievably delicious, her body immediately craved more, becoming insatiable with need. She had to take more to feed the dark void of pain or it would swallow her whole.

  With the Nahullo’s strength, she broke the shackles of bondage from off her ankles, wrists and neck, suffering only a minor irritation. The orange-haired Nahullo aimed his weapon at her, but she easily took in his power and strength before he could cause her harm. Quickly moving on, she focused on the white-haired Nahullo who still had a stubborn grip on Vrahnon’s hair, taking from him before he had a chance to take her uncle’s life.

  Using the power she gained from the three giants, Sennah healed Vrahnon, willing his body to repair itself and be strong so that no one could hurt him anymore. Then letting pure instinct take over, she made him disappear in a flash of light, knowing only that she was sending him to a place where he would be safe.

  With Vrahnon gone, Sennah turned her focus to the malignant energy of the now frantic crowd trying to flee. Taking their hateful vitality into herself, Sennah gained their collective strength as it filled her. Closing her eyes in ecstasy, she opened herself to the ambrosial sensation that eclipsed her pain and made living bearable. She took until there was nothing left.