Now’s our chance! Cassandra thought, even as Gatticus began backing away from the developing confrontation.
Darius smirked. “You know, I don’t even have to fight you. I could just take control of you both and make you walk off the roof.”
Cassandra’s eyes widened with alarm. He was right. He was a Luminary, the last one now that Tanik was dead. “Dad...” she tried.
“Don’t you Dad me.” She felt his mind reaching for hers, pushing past her defenses and taking control of her will. Dyara’s eyes glazed over in an instant, but Cassandra fought back with everything she had, using the mind-shielding techniques that Tanik had taught her. She could feel Darius’s surprise, and his subsequent outrage as she pushed him out.
“You’ve gotten stronger,” Darius said. “It’s a pity you chose to fight against me. Together we could have been unstoppable—father and daughter, ruling the galaxy forever.”
“We still can!” Cassandra said, hoping he would buy it.
“Liar!” he screamed, and began advancing on her once more.
Cassandra glanced sideways at Dyara and grimaced at the sight of her blank, staring eyes. “Snap out of it, Dya!”
Dyara turned and smiled, her sword flashing up toward Cassandra’s face.
She leapt back and the blade blurred by mere inches from her nose. “Dyara!” Cassandra screamed, backpedaling hastily to put some distance between them.
“You’re going to have to kill her,” Darius said. “She won’t stop.”
Cassandra reached for Dyara’s mind in a desperate attempt to break Darius’s hold on her, but it was no use. Darius was too strong.
Dyara leapt into the air, covering the distance between them in a flash. Her sword swept down, and Cassandra brought hers up to block. The force of the blow was too much for her. It knocked her on her rear. Cassandra lay gazing up into Dyara’s staring brown eyes, helpless to get away. She cringed and gave Dyara a telekinetic shove. The woman stumbled back a few steps, giving Cassandra the chance she needed to jump back to her feet.
In that instant, Cassandra saw Gatticus creeping up behind Darius with the canister. She had to keep him distracted and facing her. He couldn’t sense Gatticus, but he could still see the android with his eyes if he turned around.
Dyara came striding back in, her blade flashing back and forth in a deadly zigzagging motion. Cassandra parried and blocked, backpedaling the whole way to buy time. “I don’t want to fight you!” she said.
Darius just laughed. “If you don’t fight, you’ll die.”
Dyara’s attacks were too determined and too strong to resist. Darius was right. She had to strike back, or she was going to die before Gatticus even had the chance to release the virus.
Cassandra darted around Dyara and swept her legs out with a kick, while simultaneously aiming a diagonal slash for her sword arm.
Dyara lost her footing and fell at just the right moment. She only partially blocked Cassandra’s blade, and it sailed on to nick a flaming chunk out of her side. Dyara fell screaming, and her vacant stare gave way to wide, pain-filled eyes and flaring nostrils. Darius had broken the connection.
Cassandra dropped her sword and fell on her haunches by Dyara’s side. She could see where severed ribs ended, and the hole in Dyara’s side began. She could see... organs. Air whistled in and out of one of Dyara’s lungs. The damaged lung pressed against jagged black ribs, squeezing out through the hole and blowing noxious curls of smoke into Cassandra’s visor.
She rounded on Darius with a hateful glare. “You did this!”
He held up his hands in a shrug, both of them still clutching swords, and offered her a smug smile. “I didn’t do anything. That was you. Now finish her off and prove your loyalty to me. Then I’ll forgive you, and we will rule together as the last two Revenants in the galaxy.”
Cassandra gaped at him. His green eyes were blazing with an unholy light. His pallid, gray skin glowed in the light of his shield and danced with the endless scurrying of the Sprites. He was like some demon from the pits of Hell. This was not her father.
Cassandra turned back to Dyara. “Do it,” Dyara said through gritted teeth. “Kill me.”
“No.” Cassandra shook her head and defiantly thrust out her chin as she looked back to Darius. “You’ll have to kill us both.”
Darius’s face fell dramatically. “Very well,” he said, and began striding toward her.
Cassandra picked up her sword and leapt to her feet, backing away hurriedly. Where was Gatticus? He should have been able to infect Darius by now!
She fetched up against the door leading down into the palace. Desperate to escape, she turned and tried to pull it open.
But it wouldn’t budge. Cassandra’s mind raced. Had someone locked them out?
“Where do you think you’re going?” Darius crowed.
Cassandra faced him and tried to push him back with a telekinetic shove, but Darius just kept coming. He was too strong. If he reached her, there was no way she could defend herself against two swords. Cassandra tried to run, thinking she could jump off the roof and use the ZPF to slow her fall.
But she found herself pinned to the door. Darius held her there, making it impossible for her to run. Cassandra pushed back against the invisible hand holding her, using every ounce of strength she had, but Darius pushed harder still—so hard that she could barely breathe.
Darius stopped within easy reach of her, his expression full of dismay. “I had such high hopes for you, but you have been an utter disappointment. All those years, I went to such lengths to save you, and this is how you repay me? With betrayal?” Darius slowly shook his head. “I saved your life, and now I’m going to take it away. I hope for your sake you find your way to an afterlife with a god who’s more patient than I.”
Cassandra’s eyes blurred with tears as she watched Darius raise both of his swords for the kill.
“Darius! Catch!” Dyara said in a gasping voice. In the next instant, a silver canister appeared spinning in the air between them. Cassandra hurriedly shut the air intakes of her suit and re-opened the valves to her air tank.
Darius’s eyes pinched in confusion, then widened in horror and recognition at the sight of the silver canister. He sucked in a horrified breath and stumbled away just as the nanites streamed out in a silvery cloud. He took in a whole lungful of them before trying to cough them back out.
But even as he did so, they zipped back in, flying up his nose and through his ears. Darius’s nostrils flared, and his glowing eyes flickered. His face turned bright red, and pinpricks of blood appeared like freckles all over his face.
The weight on Cassandra’s chest lifted, and she sagged, gasping for air. She stood staring in horror at Darius, even as an agonized scream tore from his lips.
Gatticus came striding into view, and Cassandra rounded on him. “What is it doing to him? Why is he bleeding?”
Gatticus just looked at her and shook his head. “I don’t know, but he doesn’t have long.”
Chapter 47
Cassandra held Darius’s head in her lap, her tears falling in a puddle inside her helmet. Spasms rippled through his body, muscles and tendons standing out like cords. He gasped, struggling to speak. “C-Cass,” he stuttered. “I’m s-sorry.”
She looked up at Gatticus. He stood off to one side, watching with a frown. “You have to stop the virus! He’s changing back. He’s going back to his old self!”
Gatticus just looked at her. “His pupillary response indicates that he is being deceptive. If I deactivate the virus now, he might kill you.”
“But it’s killing him!”
“You knew that would happen,” Gatticus replied.
“Because I thought we couldn’t save him!”
Darius’s whole body tensed and he cried out once more, his eyes rolling in his head.
“Gatticus! Deactivate it now!” Cassandra pleaded.
“Very well.”
Darius relaxed suddenly, and the pained expression left
his face—replaced by a flash of rage. He leapt to his feet and gestured to Gatticus with one hand, lifting the android into the air. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that, robot.”
Darius made a fist, and Gatticus’s body and face began to deform, crumpling inward like tin foil. “Dad! Stop!” Cassandra put a hand on his arm, trying to force it back down to his side, as if that could affect what he was doing with his mind.
“Gatticus, reactivate the virus!”
But a distorted slur was all he gave for a reply.
Darius’s rage paled to shock. He blinked and dropped his arm all by himself, his attention dipping to the gleaming black sword jutting from his chest.
“What?” he asked, and sank to his knees, shaking his head. Gatticus fell in a heap, and struggled to rise with a grinding whine of damaged joints and servomotors.
Cassandra was equally confused—until she remembered Dyara. She spun around to find the woman had dragged herself to within fifteen feet of them. She’d propped herself up on one elbow to watch them.
“How could you!” Cassandra screamed. “You killed him!”
“I’m sorry, Cass,” she said in a husky whisper.
Cassandra scowled and shook her head, too furious to speak.
“Get it... out,” Darius gasped.
She hurried to remove the sword. It slid out of his back with a sickening squelch of blood, and Darius collapsed once more. Cassandra held him to her chest, his blood slipping through her fingers in a slick, sticky river. “You can’t die!”
“The empire is yours now,” he rasped.
Cassandra refused to accept that. “No. You’re going to live.”
“Be...” Darius sucked in a ragged breath and grabbed her hand in a painfully tight fist. He coughed up a clot of blood that ran down his chin in a crimson stain. Be better than me, he finished, using whatever vestiges of power he had left to finish his sentence inside Cassandra’s thoughts. Darius’s gaze slid to hers just as the light left his eyes. His expression froze, with death stealing what little color was left in his face.
“No!” Cassandra screamed. She had to get him to a hospital. She reached into the ZPF and called to Trista, telling her to come pick them up on the roof of the palace.
Trista responded affirmatively.
“Gatticus! Use your hands!” Cassandra said, suddenly remembering that he’d been able to use his hands to shock people back to life on other occasions.
Gatticus was already down on one knee, still struggling to get up after the damage Darius had inflicted. His jaw hung open at an odd angle. His nose was crooked, and one of his eyes drooped. The other one swiveled to regard her, then dipped to Darius. A blue fan of light flickered out as he performed some kind of scan. He shook his head with a sound of grinding metal.
Cassandra’s eyes opened like two faucets, and she fell over backward, sobbing herself senseless. When the O2 indicator on her HUD began blinking, warning that she was running out of air, she didn’t even care. She wanted to suffocate. If she died, there was a chance that she might still be reunited with her dad in some kind of heaven.
But Gatticus refused to let her. He limped over and twisted off her helmet. Cassandra’s lungs heaved reflexively, forcing her to suck in a deep breath. She just lay there, blinking tears and staring in horror up at the cold blue sky.
She was dead in ways that went far beyond the physical. The roar of landing thrusters rumbled, making the air shiver, and Trista’s transport hovered down into view. Moments later, Trista and Buddy came bounding out of the airlock.
“What happened?” Trista shouted as she ran across the roof. Cassandra didn’t have the strength for a reply.
“Who are yoo—oh, Fek!” Trista exclaimed, as she reached Dyara and saw her injuries. Cassandra felt a flash of bitter satisfaction at that. Dya deserved it. She’d killed her father!
But then she remembered Darius’s last request—be better than me—and for the first time in the past many months, she understood the darkness that had overtaken him. Anger and rage over losing her, the necessity of war, and the cold, slithering whispers of the Sprites themselves had all twisted him into something that he never should have become.
Despite the pain of losing him, Cassandra experienced a moment of clarity, and her anger gave way to shame and guilt. She had to fight back if she was going to avoid her father’s fate.
“Cassy!” Trista said. “Are you okay?” She rose on wooden legs and nodded stiffly. “Come on.” The other woman wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “We have to get Dya to a hospital.”
Cassandra let Trista lead her across the rooftop toward the Harlequin, but then she remembered something. “Wait...” Cassandra whispered, and dug in her heels.
“What’s wrong?” Trista asked.
Cassandra’s gaze flicked around the rooftop, looking for the unconscious Keth that Tanik had been trying to save, but she was nowhere to be seen. “Someone’s missing.”
“We’ll find them later,” Trista said, and pulled her toward the waiting transport once more.
Gatticus limped up beside them, dragging a useless leg with a persistent scraping sound.
Trista spared a glance at him. “You look like you got hit by a hover truck.”
Gatticus nodded with that assessment and gestured vaguely in Darius’s direction.
“Can’t talk, huh?” Trista said. “Well, don’t worry. We’ll fix you up.”
Chapter 48
—ONE YEAR LATER—
Cassandra sat in the throne room of the palace, listening with half an ear to reports from her ministers, generals, and admirals. The galaxy was in ruins, with all the different species fighting each other over the scraps. The Revenants had provided a temporary sense of order, analogous to what the Cygnians had established during their reign. Fear had kept everyone in line, and when a group of conquering heroes with supernatural powers had arrived, that same system of ruling by fear had continued. Without it, people were succumbing to the madness and violence of the Sprites simmering in their veins. Thanks to the Crucible and the Cygnians’ practice of exposing everyone to the Sprites when they came of age, the same disease that had consumed Darius was raging to a lesser extent inside every sentient being in the galaxy.
The Sprites were the disease, but a modified version of Gatticus’s virus was the cure. The original virus had pacified the surviving Cygnians, spreading across their lonely prison world in short order and making them the most civilized species in the known universe. The Sprites were the real enemy in all of this.
Cassandra battled them daily. Now she knew what horrors her father had faced, and succumbed to, during his rise to power. Power itself was addictive, and the Sprites were always there begging for more—whispering, urging, and tempting her to fill herself more fully with them, to become them.
Dyara was a voice of reason, the guiding light that kept her sane and accountable. Even so, somehow it was therapeutic to sit where her father had sat and to know the demons he had faced. It helped to reinforce the fact that he wasn’t the one who had done and said all those horrible things.
The General who had been speaking a moment ago trailed off suddenly, seeming to realize that she was no longer listening.
Cassandra smiled her thanks for his report and waved him away. “Admiral Mathos, how is our fleet doing with its task?”
The black-furred Lassarian stepped to the fore and bared his teeth in a predatory smile. “We have seeded twelve new worlds with the virus, and they are now willing to discuss joining the empire—on the condition that we protect them from their more militant neighbors.”
Cassandra nodded. “That won’t be a problem, will it?”
“I hope not, Empress,” Yuri replied. “The civil war still rages, but our fleet is strong.”
Cassandra breathed a sigh that rasped through her respirator. She had to wear that mask, and her isolation suit at all times. It was the only way to protect herself from infection. Likewise, her right-hand, Dyara, also nee
ded to keep her abilities—at least for now. Cassandra could hear her breath rasping in and out of her mask from where she stood to one side of the throne.
Cassandra would have gladly given up power and subjected herself to the virus, but there was at least one Keth still out there somewhere, and dozens of Revenants, whose bodies had been suspiciously missing from those found in the courtyard—despite Darius’s decree that attendance was mandatory. They’d probably foreseen the coming massacre, just as Darius had.
“Gatticus?” Cassandra prompted.
“My Lady?”
“How is the production of the new Executor models coming along?”
“Very well. We’ve filled twenty-one new orders just this week.”
“Good, and the Marine bots?”
“Forty-two thousand units are on their way to support the Executors on allied worlds,” Gatticus replied.
“Excellent, and how are we doing with the relocation of the Cygnians?”
“They’ve been cooperative. There have been no incidents so far.”
“I still believe it’s a mistake to let them live,” Yuri growled. “Much less to give them a suitable world where they can rebuild.”
“My father would have agreed with you,” Cassandra said, thrusting out her chin in disdain for that objection. “And that is why I do not. The Cygnians were more affected by the Sprites than most species. It isn’t their fault that they did the things they did.”
Silence answered that rebuke, and Yuri bowed his head in apology. “Yes, My Lady.”
Cassandra’s gaze roved on, past her mob of generals, admirals, and other military leaders, until she found a particular individual, Evos—an artist, a Dol Walin sculptor who had nothing to do with the dark and ugly business of war.
She nodded to him. “How’s progress on my monument coming along?”
“It is nearly complete, Empress,” he replied in his watery voice. “With your permission, perhaps you would like to come and see it before the official unveiling?”
Cassandra’s eyes crinkled with a genuine smile that Evos couldn’t see behind her mask. She nodded to him. “Yes, I would like that very much.” She glanced at Dyara who was standing silently to one side of the throne. “Shall we?”
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