The Nemesis

by S. J. Kincaid

  And how many times had I seen Excess strapped down beneath blood funnels on Devil’s Shade, screaming in terror as they created this product?

  “Novashine,” I murmured. “Isn’t it?”

  The captain grew rigid, perhaps fearing I would covet this valuable substance for myself and renege on our agreement.

  “Poor quality,” he assured me. “It’s watered-down stuff—”

  “Helios Devoured, I don’t give a damn what quality it is.” My voice came out as a low growl, dark anger barely leashed. All I could imagine was that some of this blood was Atmas’s. Certainly this evil trade had ruined a million girls just like her. I turned on the captain, my pulse rifle aimed directly at his head. “What else are you carrying?”

  Some were legitimate medicines, rare antibiotics and the like. Others were the sort of chemical products that required factory-size synthesizers to produce in significant quantity. Those, I let him keep.

  The Novashine and the other human-grown products—with so many variants of desiccating rose—I blasted apart crate by crate. The captain and his crew winced and cringed at the sight of their profits being blown away, but they dared not intervene, especially after Anguish took up position just behind me to monitor them while I worked.

  But destroying this supply wouldn’t be enough. This captain and crew could take the Retribution and sell it for more funds to sink into more distribution of these evil narcotics.

  I could simply kill all of them—send the Retribution into a star… The temptation pulled at me until I’d transformed the last crate of desiccating rose into a smoking pile of rubble.

  Then I turned on the kneeling crew of the vessel and saw their hollow-eyed faces, pale and waxen with fear—and in some cases, shame. My hatred shifted, becoming contempt. They knew what they did was wrong, yet they did it regardless.

  I stepped toward the captain as I tore off my hood.

  His jaw dropped, his eyes growing wide with confusion, disbelief.

  “Do you recognize me?” I said.

  “You’re… you’re Nemesis!”

  “Yes,” I said softly. “And so you know I have returned from death, more than once. You know I am a Diabolic. I have ripped hearts from living chests. I have killed so many with my bare hands, I have lost track of their names.”

  He was visibly shaking now; he dared not take his eyes from my face.

  “Don’t sell those products again. If you do, I will hunt you down. I will hurt you. And you will wish you were dead long before I put you from your misery. Do you understand?”

  He threw himself down to the floor. “I swear, I swear—I won’t.”

  I looked down on him where he prostrated himself in terror. Here was the abject submission that Tyrus called “worship.” This was the sight his Venalox-warped brain had grown to relish.

  Perhaps I had a use for it, after all.

  “There is one more service I require of you. In exchange for your life. For the lives of your crew. For the vessel I am giving you.”

  “I will never breathe a word of this encounter!” he vowed, anticipating me. “Nor will my crew!”

  I doubted he would hold his tongue for long. But if fear kept him silent for a few days, it would delay Tyrus’s realization that the Retribution no longer offered a way to track me. “Good. And you will take the Retribution to the Paradox star system. Listen to me carefully: the second planet from the star. That is where you will go.”

  Anguish slid me an amused glance. He knew what I was doing.

  “I… yes, the second planet. What shall we do there?” The captain was pitifully eager to take instruction now. “Tell me exactly.”

  “Why, what but sell your cargo.” I shrugged. “It’s a wealthy province on the frontier. Plenty of buyers waiting. You will sell there—not on Eurydice.”

  “That’s what you require?” the captain said, confused.

  “Precisely that,” I said. “Send and receive no transmissions until your task is done. I’ll know if you do not obey me.”

  And he swore again to do so. I did not know if he’d keep his word, but it mattered not. Anguish and I watched as his crew gathered their belongings and departed, leaving us their freighter, the Phoenix.

  “The Paradox system,” Anguish said after they were gone, a laugh twitching at his lips. “That’s nearly two months in hyperspace, is it not?”

  I offered a brief, satisfied smile in reply. Two months was enough time for Tyrus’s tracking sensors to mislead him, to persuade him I was heading in one direction while our new ship went in the other. He would assume I was limping off to exile. By the time he realized I was not onboard the Retribution, well…

  There was a great deal of havoc one could wreak in eight weeks. I intended to make the most of them.

  16

  THE OFFICIAL GALACTIC news broadcasts began covering the woe and tragedy of the Halcyon’s destruction. From the command nexus of our new freighter, the Phoenix, Anguish and I beheld the transmissions by the Eurydicean media.

  These were the state-sanctioned lies: Malignant space was not mentioned as a cause of the tragedy. Rather, the cityship’s power core had “overloaded.”

  “Hiding their Divine Emperor’s crime,” I muttered to Anguish.

  The transmissions claimed that the bulk of the Excess had escaped before the shocking tragedy. Anguish and I exchanged a glance at that, for we’d witnessed it happen—there was no chance a wide-scale evacuation had preceded the disaster.

  The media also claimed that the catastrophe took place a full hour after the disruption of the ceremony.

  Another lie.

  But Tyrus now controlled the collective perception of reality. The actual number of dead would never be widely known.

  “How do they lie so unflinchingly?” I wondered aloud.

  Anguish shrugged his massive shoulders. “If all still operates as it did under my master and Randevald, then those on Eurydice are supplied with truth from the Chrysanthemum. They are well-practiced in repeating what they are told.”

  Of course. Tyrus had once sworn to purge corruption from the Empire. Now he exploited it just as his predecessors had.

  As for rumors of my reappearance…

  “It’s clearly become a favorite Partisan tactic, using a beauty bot to adopt the late Empress’s appearance,” said one newscaster dismissively. “One cannot lend any credence to the claims that she was there. We all know she perished years ago.”

  They were going to dismiss me. Again. This time, with most of the witnesses conveniently dead, it would be easy.

  If any had even survived, they’d still hail from Tyrus’s most devoted followers, for only the devout had been invited aboard the Halcyon. They’d believe any explanation for the disaster he furnished. They’d spread his new public narrative uncritically. Anyone who could believe Tyrus a god could fool themselves into believing anything.

  It was easy to convince oneself of a lie you wished to believe. Hadn’t I done just that when I’d decided that Tyrus was insane rather than irredeemable?

  And then a familiar face appeared on the transmissions, and my every muscle grew rigid.

  “Nemesis. Ah, yes, Nemesis…”

  It was someone I knew well.

  Gladdic von Aton.

  Dressed in the rich, flamboyant manner of a Grande, he smiled pleasantly for the galactic news cameras.

  “What can I say about Nemesis?” He paused, thinking it over. “She was remarkable. Nemesis was… Oh, forgive me.” A polite chuckle. “The Empress. I know it was an imposter who claimed the title, but I haven’t forgotten that our Divine Emperor invested her with it posthumously. Please understand, I don’t mean to be disrespectful to Her Late Supremacy, but we were friends before her engagement to our Divine Emperor—”

  In my shock I could hardly focus on what he said. He looked flushed and well-fed, practically glowing with health. What a contrast he cut to the pitiful figure I’d glimpsed on the last, bloody day in the ball dome.
r />   “No,” I said aloud.

  “It’s him,” Anguish said.

  Gladdic’s interviewer asked some question that amused him. He threw back his head in laughter, displaying a flawless set of straight white teeth. He did not look like a man who had ever known beatings or fear.

  Tyrus had told me he gave Gladdic lucrative opportunities to earn his forgiveness. Perhaps I had secluded myself away on Devil’s Shade too thoroughly, shut my ears too completely to news of the galaxy.… For I had not realized Gladdic had become a propagandist.

  “As a close friend of Her Late Supremacy,” Gladdic was saying, “I know Nemesis would be appalled by these Partisans acting in her name. She loved our Divine Emperor to the last. I watched the imposter die. It wasn’t Nemesis, I assure you. Believe me, she is dead.”

  “Liar,” I rasped.

  “Forgive me,” Gladdic said, blinking rapidly as he clutched his heart. “It’s still hard to speak of her—she was such a dear friend. I assure you, though, that these rumors of her ‘return’ are an insult to those who have mourned her for years. If you see anyone wearing her face, know that they profane her. It’s not Nemesis.”

  I’d always protected Gladdic! And now, he lied about me.

  I glared at the image. “You coward.”

  “Are you surprised?” said Anguish darkly.

  I caught my fist before it could slam into the screen. Instead I clenched my jaw as I glared at the image. “You coward,” I muttered.

  “This surprises you?” Anguish said to me. “He has always protected his own life over his integrity.”

  No. No, it didn’t surprise me. A cold malice crept through me, and I looked at Anguish with a wicked plan in mind. “We need more information about targets to determine where to strike first. We have to start somewhere. Perhaps by striking at a member of the Grandiloquy.”

  Anguish arched his brow. “Him?”

  “Oh yes. Him.”

  We both looked at Gladdic as he rattled off more lies about me, but no longer was pure anger beating through my veins.… For there was a giddiness inside me, knowing we had our first target.

  17

  THE PHOENIX had been equipped with sufficient weaponry to scare away pirates. But it was no match for Gladdic’s ship, the Atlas. Nor could I repeat the trick I’d used to acquire this vessel. If we slammed into the Atlas, we wouldn’t survive.

  Of course, neither would the Atlas.

  Gladdic’s movements were highly publicized, now that he was a propagandist for Tyrus. Anguish and I headed to the planet Daedalus in time to meet him on the way back from a public event with the system’s Viceroy. We watched on our sensors as his vessel rose from the surface of Daedalus, and then we began to stalk his ship, staying just at the edge of our sensor range.

  We bided our time until the Atlas reached that patch of space known as a chaotic gale, where certain electromagnetic properties wreaked havoc on the technology of passing vessels.

  Special protocols had to be followed to pass safely through these patches of space. Wise captains approached at high speeds, building momentum so they could shut down their ships’ engines and all nonessential tech and coast through the gale. To do otherwise was to risk catastrophic system failure—equipment, security bots, and computer systems would short out, and engine parts would fail.

  We carefully navigated through the vast asteroid belt encircling the vivid pink-and-blue dust of the chaotic gale, monitoring Gladdic’s vessel as it flirted with the edge of our sensor range. We waited until the Atlas’s lights dimmed, signaling the withdrawal of its security bots into its bays and a downshift to minimal power mode to limit the exposure of equipment to the electromagnetism.

  “Go,” I said to the Phoenix, and the autonavigation propelled us on a course that exactly matched that of the Atlas.

  Then a burn of the engines propelled us to a reckless speed.

  “Turn all noncritical systems off,” I told the Phoenix’s computer.

  The vessel cut its power and stranded us adrift, propelled by our momentum on a collision course directly with Gladdic’s vessel. We threaded through the bright nebular dust, and then Gladdic’s vessel appeared through the haze.

  Neither of our vessels had full communications powered on, but a coded message swiftly blinked from the windows of his vessel to ours. Anguish had learned to interpret these signals while with the Partisans. He translated for me.

  “ ‘Change course,’ they say,” Anguish said. “ ‘A collision will kill us both.’ ”

  “Return this message: ‘I know.’ ”

  A grim smile tugged at his lips as he flicked our own lights to convey the message.

  We veered closer and closer. The next message blinked faster and faster: “ ‘Stop,’ ” Anguish translated. “ ‘You will kill us both. Stop. You will kill us both. Stop. You will kill us both.’ ”

  I smiled. “Tell them: ‘Yes, I will.’ ”

  The Phoenix drifted closer and closer to the Atlas, our momentum barreling us through skeins of pink and purple stardust. My clenched fists squeezed so tightly they throbbed.

  “Turn on your engines, Gladdic,” I whispered to the distant Grande. “You don’t want to die.”

  Gladdic’s obedience to Tyrus told me he was desperate to survive. He had to be far, far more afraid of death than I was.

  Soon we were close enough to the spherical vessel to perceive the windows speckling its hull. The occupants within had a fine view of their impending doom.

  Anguish rose to his full height as we veered dangerously close. “Nemesis, I think we—”

  “Wait for it.” I could not be wrong. Gladdic was too much a coward—

  The Atlas abruptly lit up, engines firing. The thrusters blasted the Atlas clear of our ship, and its lasers fired a rebuke toward us that sliced apart the gale of pink and purple clouds.

  The Phoenix jolted violently, then rocked and bucked as though trying to shake off the blow. Anguish barked out a laugh, and I grinned as I pressed my palms flat against the vibrating command nexus, its panels sparking and sizzling from laser damage.

  Gladdic had just lost.

  We listed forward through space, end over end, still coasting on momentum, and I found a window from which I watched the Atlas founder through the clouds, veins of bright plasma discharge dancing over its hull. In powering up, the vessel had damaged itself.

  Anguish came to my side. I took his hand and gripped it hard as we watched the receding vessel succumb to the strangely lovely bouts of internal power surges. Small pieces of its hull began to peel away like rotten skin. The large windows near the forward bow showed the dancing brightness of flames.

  “Now what?” said Anguish.

  “Guard the ship,” I said. “I will have a talk with Gladdic.”

  * * *

  We caught up to the Atlas as she limped out of the chaotic gale. There were no defensive shields in working order, nothing to stop our landing tethers from snaring it in our grasp. I extended our boarding artery and then stalked onto the ship, a pulse rifle in hand.

  The Grandiloquy relied on security bots for the same reason they had once depended on Diabolics: it was easier to engineer a guard than to find a lackey willing to die for the Empire’s elite. The Aton servants who saw us simply raised their hands in surrender.

  “Where is Aton?” I asked one. His shaking hand pointed toward the command nexus.

  Inside, Gladdic von Aton whipped around to face me. He was still dressed up for his appearance on Daedalus—he wore a headdress resembling a haloed sunburst, and a metal half-shirt that bared his machine-sculpted abdomen. His surprise at seeing me was lent a comical touch by his makeup; his green eyes were darkly lined and framed by extravagantly long, thick lashes. Propagandists had to keep up appearances.

  “It’s been years, Gladdic. Miss me?” I asked.

  His gaze dropped to the rifle in my hand. “Nice touch,” he said, his voice cracking. “You sound just like her.”

&n
bsp; I tossed the rifle aside and drew a blade, letting the metal catch the light. Then I hurled it toward him. He shrieked and dropped to the floor as it plunged through his ridiculous headdress, pinning it to the wall behind him.

  “Next time I aim between your eyes,” I snarled. “You despicable worm.”

  Gladdic shoved himself up on his elbows, still gaping at me. The shock seemed to have eroded his wits. He closed his mouth, but it immediately fell open again.

  Not for the first time, he reminded me of a stricken animal. Poor Gladdic, I’d often thought. That memory stirred an accompanying sensation.… I’d often felt protective of him.

  Not again. In shielding this weakling, I’d enabled his pathetic feebleness to be weaponized by Tyrus and used against me.

  I was all out of pity.

  “To your feet,” I said.

  “It can’t be you!”

  “I said to your feet!” I reached down and dragged him up by the collar. Metal flashed—a small energy weapon he’d hidden until now. It was aimed right at me.

  Mockingly, I smiled. I spread my arms. “Go ahead, then.”

  His hand trembled. “Don’t move,” he quavered. “Don’t move a centimeter.”

  “Why did you lie about me, Gladdic?”

  “You can’t be Nemesis. She’s dead. The real Nemesis is dead—”

  “Pathetic,” I said flatly. “Obeying Tyrus like his little lapdog. I should have let him kill you.”

  “You’re not Nemesis.”

  I seized the barrel of his energy weapon and pressed it to my forehead. “Shoot me. Go ahead!”

  His eyes glistened with tears.

  He would weep? How dare he? I seized hold of the energy weapon, yanked it to the side, and then kicked his knees out from under him. He landed with a heavy thud, and I caught him by the hair, wrenching his head back before I jammed the weapon into his mouth.

  He gagged.

  “Shall I show you how murder is done?” I asked him.

  “P-puhhh!”

  “Please? Is that what you mean to say?”