The Lady's Champion

by M F Sullivan

  Theodore shrieked as the General zapped him into silence with the collar. A mild jolt, more effective than a slap in the head. Not as satisfying, though. “I want you to make sure,” she continued to Gethsemane as they hauled the somewhat-subdued Governor up several flights of stairs, “that you have everything ready for an emergency situation. The last disaster I need is to lose you, René, Tenchi, or Farhad for a reason as stupid as Teddy.”

  “Now you’re hurting my feelings.”

  Dominia at last addressed her brother as she hauled him out to the roof of the building, where Farhad landed their helicopter in the available space: a mere lifeboat to the greater E4-GL3 unit that would sweep them to a safer mass of land than the Americas. “I just mean to say that it’s not like we’re going to kill you, so losing my—friend’s life in exchange for yours is out of the question.” Even now, even here, she was hesitant to refer to Gethsemane as her “girlfriend,” and this earned one long blink from the stoic woman who otherwise continued her visual sweep of the area.

  “Aren’t my men’s lives worth as much as your friends’? Is that a helicopter? Oh, Father! Father, where are you! You said you’d always protect me.”

  Now he was crying. Dominia tried not to roll her eyes as the grown man (over a hundred years old, combining human and martyr years!) hyperventilated when the simple flying machine touched the ground with the delicate bounce of a ballerina. “Just give him the pill now,” she urged.

  As Gethsemane rooted through the handbag in her elbow, the red-eyed Governor gulped out the words, “What pill?”

  “It’s not a hard-core tranquilizer,” Dominia insisted. Gethsemane lifted the little pink speck and said in her placid tone, “This will help you, Governor, to relax on the trip.”

  Even before his sister clarified, “Just one of DIOX’s stupid benzos,” Theodore had already snatched the pill from her fingers with a hilariously birdlike movement of his lips. He now swallowed it dry, eyes leaping between the faces of the two women and the open flanks of the helicopter to which he was again pulled.

  “Please, let me sit between you.”

  “That is perhaps a good idea,” agreed Gethsemane. Dominia watched from the corner of her expressionless eyes as the woman climbed into the helicopter, her kaleidoscopic dress shifting against her mocha thighs, and Theodore drew from both the General’s line of sight and the human’s tone all he needed to know.

  “Oh, no, you two aren’t— Dominia, didn’t you learn your lesson last time? Humans and martyrs mingling only leads to trouble!”

  “You were a human who mingled with martyrs,” Dominia reminded him, climbing into the helicopter and shouting among the din of the propeller and distant scream of sirens, “Asre’,” as though Farhad did not know to hurry up perfectly well, himself. As the women strapped themselves in and helped the fumbling Governor, the General continued, “Anyway, it’s none of your business with whom I’m doing what.”

  “It’s simply wrong,” insisted the stuffy man. “I mean, meeting a girl in a club for a night is one thing! But somebody you know? Long-term? A human!” Dominia tried to stifle another eye roll and succeeded only because Gethsemane leaned forward as though to kiss her. The General presented her face as such, expecting an opportunity to horrify her younger brother, when in fact Gethsemane’s aim was to whip the (surprisingly well-adhered) mustache from its place upon Dominia’s upper lip. While the General first swore, then sneezed, both Theodore and Farhad laughed, and Gethsemane settled, smirking, back into her seat. With a resentful glance for her brother, the General drew the gun that was not, strictly speaking, hers, and swapped it for a more fatal model in the back of the pilot’s seat.

  “I didn’t mean to laugh,” the Governor whined, but Dominia glanced at the ceiling of the helicopter.

  “It’s not for you, dingus.” From the breast pocket of her suit coat, the General removed the pocket scope and screwed it on; Gethsemane did the same, and Dominia tried to find some sanity in the girl now that she’d worked out her feelings. “Tenchi and René left as planned?”

  “The second they could—they were the first ones out.”

  “What happened in the restaurant, then?”

  “I did not see how it was possible for the engagement to end without you swarmed, General. I made a call.”

  Annoyed for her defiance as much as for the rapid-pace Spanish prayers uttered by her brother, Dominia gave in to her urge to clout Theodore. “Stop doing that. You’ll draw the Lamb’s attention, assuming it isn’t here already.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping for! Oh, God, don’t let me die!”

  “You’ve already died once,” remarked Gethsemane.

  “That was terrifying, too, but not like this. And I don’t want to die again, forever! Dominia, please.”

  He clutched her sleeve at more or less the same instant Farhad said, “Drones,” so yet again, his plea was ignored. Both women leaned from the helicopter, guns steadied upon their forearms and heads lowered to their scopes to fire into the well-illuminated night of the United Front’s new capital. The police and military reaction had been quicker than Dominia had hoped, but the incessant glow of New Elsinore—Longacre Square, an exposed, neon heart—illuminated her targets better than even her abandoned DIOX-I could have. With but two natural eyes, her shot was phenomenal. Gethsemane, not so trained as her companion, still made quick work of a pair of drones while Theodore sobbed, “I barely even know what’s going on.”

  There wasn’t much to know. Wasn’t it all self-evident? He was being kidnapped. The police and the military were trying to rescue him. The General might have explained it to him had they more time, but she was just as happy—or happier—to wait for the benzo to loosen him up. Until then, her focus was on meeting the automatic fire of the nearing drones with patient shots that sent them reeling into the miasma of lights. Every glance she took after them made Dominia sick—not for heights, but for memories of living in the Front. She had another home, now. Her own city. She had to remind herself.

  Of course, what was that self she reminded? She had felt herself less and less over the past year. This would not have been so alarming had it not produced a physiological effect: a kind of numbness in her cheeks and hands, as though she was literally not feeling herself. It was hard, most nights, to admit the source of this oppression, but seeing New Elsinore with its black Hudson river and glittering lights reminded her of San Valentino, reminded her of happier times she dare not imagine, and dredged the feeling again.

  This numb sensation reached its apex when the Lady suggested it was time to respond to the Hierophant’s year-long campaign of bombing and pussyfooting troops into territories around the perimeter of Jerusalem by less cowardly, more direct action: the acquisition of Theodore, who, deserving of the position or not, was one of the most prominent martyrs in the world.

  A few weeks back, in the center of war-torn Israel, the General had accepted an invitation to come to the Lady’s chambers, to watch Her recline upon a chaise lounge and speak without moving Her lips in a sound that was the voice of each woman who had hosted the Lady. Each woman, including the present avatar, Miki Soto. The chambers rested within Jerusalem’s library, ever growing to keep out the Hierophant in the tradition of the ill-fated statues from the Cairo gardens. He could not bear to bomb a collection of rare and beautiful books; therefore, the corner of Jerusalem with that vast library was the safest spot in town. The immediate increasing of the library’s size had been Dominia’s idea, and had become an overarching background task across the first several months of her leadership. The following year, as UF and Europa troops pressed into Jerusalem and began, block by block, building by building, to clear the city of Hunters, Dominia worked harder for the Lady than she ever had for the Hierophant. Yet when called to that silken, windowless palace room in the center of the library, it was not for praise of her efforts.

  You have not been doing your work lately, the Lady observed when she arrived.

  The boggl
ing General tried to laugh, but the noise caught in her throat. “I built you a palace in one month and filled it with books to keep my Father away. I’ve disciplined the men who once abused your women and whipped both groups into a genuine army. My Father’s troops have pressed into the city using my presence as an excuse but that same presence keeps our men and women fighting ferociously to push him back. We’ve begun to experiment with the Ergosphere teleporters, and I’ve trained men in the navigation of the Void—Farhad and three of his pilots, and Gethsemane, although she’s a little…unstable.”

  That is not the work We mean.

  It was only in intuition that she took the Lady’s meaning. “You want me to drop the defense and move against my Father.”

  The time is coming that an aggressive move shall need to be made—and sooner, rather than later. Do you know, Dominia, what happens in the Front even now? Do you think those humans can withstand his tyranny any longer than Jerusalem can brace itself against his bombs?

  Yes, she knew what was happening in the Front. A mass culling. Concentration camps. Deportation, and not back to the respective home countries of those immigrants detained: deportation to city centers across the UF and Europa, for fuss-free food. Not that Europa was any less inclined to violence than usual. Since Dominia had risen to control of the Hunters, Israel had voted to exit the union of the Middle States in a double-edged sword of a move that gave the General and the Lady control of the holy country, but that also left that same state without any official political allies. The Hierophant immediately massed troops in Turkey, increased military presence in Cyprus, and received permission from the Middle States to rid their region of his terrorist daughter. The rest of the world, terrified of being accused of terrorist collusion, strove to mind its own business. Therefore, outside of cells in Tangiers and Tunis, Jerusalem was alone, and so were the Front’s immigrant humans.

  Your Father must be shown that what is happening in the Front is not acceptable. The Lady sat up, feet tucked beneath Her body as Her Bearer hurried forward with a tea tray of fruits. As she fed the obligingly parting lips of the physical avatar and the Lady’s voice carried on, Dominia thought of a ventriloquist routine she’d once been forced to endure for Lavinia’s feast night. A disruption must occur if we are to catch his attention without declaring outright war, and the largest and most vocal disruption would be the deposition of Theodore.

  Though at first she laughed to think of her idiot brother and the useless figurehead he was, her laughter faded, for the Lady hadn’t sense of humor enough to make a joke. And besides, the General could see the reason in it.

  There was, after all, something Dominia wanted to ask him.

  You wish to ask why your Father really keeps Lavinia locked in her high tower? Always probing where She wasn’t welcome. Dominia narrowed her eyes in the then familiar displeasure of having one’s thoughts read without permission. As if you do not know already.

  “The best reason to get Theodore is for his own good. He’s a simp. There so a member of the Family can be present on the continent until the Hierophant finds a replacement child for me.”

  Or he wins you back.

  “He’s not going to win me back.”

  Are you so sure? What if he were to offer you Cassandra. Would you believe him?

  Oh! The dashed hopes! The broken promises. The wound was not as fresh as it once was, but its grasping by the cruel hands of sadistic outsiders enflamed her pain worse than ever. “We’ve been through this,” said the General. “He can’t give her to me. You can’t. Nobody can.”

  You can. When all of this is over, and you have crushed your Father—when martyrs are under control, and given the grace of God’s forgiveness—then you will have Cassandra again.

  After the travesty of the Lady’s ascension ceremony, Dominia wasn’t interested in raising her hopes. Time to focus on a more relevant topic. “I don’t think this is a good idea. The liability here is extremely high.”

  But, as you said, you are doing Theodore a kindness. Extricating him from an evil life. He could serve much purpose in this place, were he to find the glamour in compassion that he finds in your Father’s way. But there is something important you wish to know from him, as you have only just thought.

  “Something you and Lazarus know,” said Dominia darkly. The Lady’s chewing lips smiled.

  Something you already know, deep down inside. Deeper down than that secret you keep from even yourself.

  The General listened to the antique clock upon the nearby writing desk, counting its ticks in time with her breath. At ten, she unclenched the jaw she had not realized to be clenched, and asked, “Are we finished here?”

  You will call to order a meeting and suggest as We have. Lazarus is more inclined to agree with ideas from your mouth.

  “Why is that?”

  Because—the Lady had chuckled on Dominia’s way out the door—he knows it is not worth the trouble of arguing with you.

  Perhaps not. One could go so far as to say that the General was the sort of person to make up her mind before she’d gotten all the facts, but that was because it was a wandering mind that fell easily into the flow of her work—a flow only shattered by Gethsemane’s high cry above Theodore’s smug, “Serves you right,” and Dominia’s matching, “Are you all right?”

  “My arm.” The human grit her teeth, looking over the side of the helicopter. “And my gun.”

  “Stay back, Gethsemane. Theodore, shut up. I’m still thinking about shooting you.”

  Blessedly, he obeyed, and in the relative silence, Farhad was as slick a pilot as Dominia was a shot. Between those two factors, by the time the police copters were in reasonable pursuit, the path was almost entirely clear of drones. Good thing, too. With one foot wedged beneath her seat and the other crammed beneath that of the pilot, the General released her seat belt to clamber into the empty passenger’s position in the cockpit. Theodore scoffed. “Are you insane?”

  “Why don’t you get useful by making your tie into a tourniquet.” Dominia shifted the massive, emergency-only weapon Farhad had been forced to jam between the console and the headrest. As her hands wrapped around the cold metal of its grips, she frowned. Would it always come to this? Would she never be able to escape this awful cycle of blood? Once, she’d hoped to make the late dentist, Tobias Akachi, her final human kill. With the Hierophant’s troops pressing upon her city and opening conflict with her soldiers, she had not taken long to dash her own hopes, like a former smoker who slipped back into the habit after a bad day at work. All smokers knew it was a whole lot harder to quit than it was to just keep lighting cigarettes.

  As the weapon lifted into the Governor’s view, he shrieked. “Is that a rocket launcher?”

  “I thought it was a ridiculous suggestion, too.” After checking the sights of the weapon, Dominia looped one arm through a strap mounted in the chopper’s ceiling and leaned into the open air. “But after I thought about it for a while, well…it was sort of inevitable that this kind of scenario would emerge.”

  “But a rocket launcher?”

  “Technically”—Gethsemane raised her voice over the aiming system’s occasional beeps—“it is a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.”

  “Oh, pardonnez-moi. Sorry I don’t know the difference.” He seemed set to go on until a burst of laughter rose from him. He had noticed the necklace swinging around Gethsemane’s neck and said while tying off the gunshot wound, “I know that diamond.”

  Dominia took her shot at that announcement, as a loudspeaker-augmented voice called, “Terrorist Dominia di Mephitoli, deliver the Governor to safety and stand down.” This unfortunate timing made it seem like the police chopper’s explosion into thunder and smoke and death was causal—a direct result of its attempts at hostage negotiation, rather than of her idiot brother’s decision to bring up her dead wife at that very second. Good luck trying to get the government to empathize with family problems at a time like this.

  Gethsemane repeat
ed her only response. “It is my duty to bear Cassandra for the General.”

  Theodore looked between them, now sufficiently drugged to be more aghast at Dominia’s relationship choices than at being in a helicopter—or the center of a very serious shoot-out. With a smug wave of hands before his arrogantly shut eyes, Teddy said, “Dominia, I hate to say it, but you’ve reached a new low. I mean, not just climbing right back into bed with humans, but making her wear your dead wife? Like a necklace! You weirdo. Was that an anniversary gift?”

  “It is my duty,” repeated the Bearer, who reached under her seat with her good arm to pass Dominia another grenade. Irritated, Theodore leaned forward to address the pilot.

  “Do you speak?” he asked, and Gethsemane answered for him, “To you, Arabic.” This elicited an eye roll from the Governor while the General, still half outside the chopper, ducked within to evade a spray of gunfire from a dedicated drone. This straggler was caught in the explosion that claimed the second police chopper, whose propellers burst in a brilliant marigold blaze before the machine wheeled into the sprawling park below.

  “Do you speak Arabic?” the Governor deigned to ask the human beside him. When she nodded, he asked, “I don’t suppose you’d tell him I’m rich, and that I’ll give him a lot of money and immunity if he lands this thing and lets me out?”

  “And why would I tell him that?”

  “Because I’ll give you money, too?”

  “What good is money?” As the remaining police helicopters stood down, Gethsemane made no move to tear her eyes away. A wise choice. The General, like a dog guarding the lambs, remained stone-faced outside the helicopter until they were well away from the island and able to pull north: the shortest route out of the city’s jurisdiction on the way to the landing strip. The Water Bearer continued to speak over the eerie whip of the copter through the wind. “What good is money to anyone? The world is ending soon. This one, anyway. It will be very different. Money as it is will not matter anymore. Not to your people. Not to me.”