by Loren Rhoads
Mykah jumped in, practically aquiver. Every inch a space pirate, Raena wanted to assure him, but she held her tongue, aware that Coni was probably monitoring them. It was in everyone’s best interest if she didn’t flirt with someone else’s boyfriend.
Vezali moved more cautiously into her gun, tentacles flowing forward and pulling herself along. Raena was impressed by the way the tentacles could be legs or arms according to Vezali’s needs. It would be fun to train the girl to become a killer.
Mykah swiveled his turret, experimenting with how fast he could move without inducing vertigo. Raena leaned back far enough that she wouldn’t get cracked by someone’s elbow. There wasn’t much room inside the bubble.
“Odds are that you won’t see another ship. I’ll tell Haoun that if he sees anything bigger than a hopper coming off the planet, he should run. But everyone will feel better if someone knows how to protect the ship while you’re running.”
“We can’t do it from the cockpit?” Vezali asked.
“No. The transport’s missile magazines were empty,” Mykah answered. “The only long-range defense we’ve got left are these energy cannons.”
“Having a live gunner with visual confirmation of targets was the old Imperial fail-safe to identify real targets, as opposed dummies, chaff, and defensive EFF signals.” Raena leaned across Vezali and flipped switch #3. “The firing control software will light targets on the LED. You prioritize which quadrants the guns focus on.”
“Is there any trick to it?” Vezali asked.
“Yeah. Fighters, even old ones like Thallian is likely to have, fly really fast. Don’t be a hotshot. You just lay down covering fire and give Haoun enough time to get away. If you wait to make sure a target is destroyed, you’re gonna get shot up bad. And since you’re the ones sticking out of the ship in this bubble, you’re gonna be the first to die.”
“Got it,” Mykah assured.
She wasn’t sure if the temptation to duel would be too much for Mykah in the heat of an attack, but for now, he sounded level-headed enough that she felt certain he understood her.
* * *
Raena brought Jain another meal, this one the same gluten and vegetables that everyone else onboard was eating. He picked at the unfamiliar food with his fork, before hunger got the better of him and he gulped it down.
Around a mouthful of food, he asked, “No more stories?”
“You’ve heard all my secrets,” she told him. “Your father loved me and beat me. I fucked him every chance I got. I would have stayed and let him kill me, but my former mistress stole me back from him.”
“You haven’t told me how you ended up in that tomb. How long did Father know you were there?”
“From the beginning. He was afraid to come after me until the grave robbers disabled his scanners.” She watched him react to that and knew she’d guessed correctly.
“So what was he afraid of?”
* * *
Raena woke sluggishly. She found wires trailing from her scalp. Cuffs pinned her wrists to a solid steel chair. Through a plastic tube, cold fluid drained into the back of one hand. That, she suspected, was either a sedative or muscle relaxant.
“My aide deserves better accommodations, but I don’t trust you not to abuse them.”
Fright blackened her vision. Raena forced herself to look up into those familiar silver eyes. Why, of all of them, did she have to be captured by Thallian?
Surprisingly, her voice was steadier than her trembling insides. “Next time, my lord, why don’t you just execute me and save yourself the trouble?”
A searing, nuclear-bright flash exploded in her brain, sweeping thoughts and breath out of its path. Raena felt her body jerk uncontrollably. Tears of shame melted down her face.
“No drugs for you, my dear,” Thallian whispered as the torture burned itself out. “The Emperor does not want you stupid and senseless when he asks why you betrayed us.”
“What’s in the IV?”
“Nourishment. Those shocks will drain you, but you’re not to have food or sleep until our guests arrive.”
“Prisoners of war get better treatment than this,” Raena observed. “Whose order was this?”
“I’m disappointed you have to ask. I intend to keep you safe until the Emperor arrives.” He brushed her tears away with a velvet-gloved hand.
White light blinded her. Again her thoughts were shattered by the attack. This time Raena allowed no tears to escape. Hatred stronger than any power she’d previously imagined allowed her to hold her head up and spit onto Thallian’s cheek.
“Does it amuse you to debase me?” he asked coldly as he wiped his face with the back of his gloved hand. “I may care for you, Raena, but you understand that I serve the Empire.”
She shook her head as much as she dared. “You’re such a greedy little servant. You hope that if you abuse me enough, the Emperor will take pity and throw you what’s left of me. You may own my body some day,” she conceded, “but whatever will remains of me will make you regret it. I will kill you. I swear that, Jonan.”
“Perhaps.” Thallian smiled again, aroused. The hatch slid open behind him. “Perhaps.”
Raena stared after him as if her gaze could dissolve the cell door. Around her, the room measured two meters square. That bastard knew she hated small rooms. In fact, he knew too much about her.
A brilliant flash demolished her thoughts. When it subsided, Raena decided the torment must be untimed, so that she couldn’t anticipate the next jolt. Such was hideously typical of Thallian’s torture devices. She committed her mind to rest until the next blast.
* * *
Sometime later, Thallian returned to gloat. “How have you occupied yourself, my dear?”
Raena stared at his perfect black beard and imagined wrenching it back with one hand as she slit his throat with the other. “There are forty-eight electrodes glued to my skull.”
“Very good.” He gave her his most charming smile, the one that hid the points of his teeth. “Because I do care for you, Raena, I designed my machine to give you no pain. The jolt merely disrupts your brain waves. It does no physical harm. The discomfort comes from the convulsions. Your body injures itself. There’s a lesson in that for you.”
“How generous,” she mocked. But knowing the pain was imaginary made the next wave easier to bear. The seizure rolled off of her, leaving a residual ache in her muscles.
“In theory, you will never be allowed enough breathing space to plan your escape.” He toyed with her restraints, just beyond the reach of her fingers. “I am curious to see if the voltage will indeed prevent you. I hope our visitors do not arrive before you attempt escape.”
Thallian bent closer to her. “Do you regret deserting your post?”
“Not at all,” she said as bravely as she could. “Enjoy this while you can. The Emperor will not allow you to keep me very long.”
Thallian grabbed her jaw. His kiss stank of death, corruption, everything venomous and rotten. She felt his gloved hand slide down onto her windpipe. Raena prayed he would kill her.
He released her before she blacked out. As he stepped back, his smile was smug, pleased with his self-restraint. “If the Emperor decides you deserve a show trial, he will return you to me afterward. I’ll have you yet, Raena, and then you won’t have this chair to protect you.”
Time passed, but Raena had no way to measure it, no meals or sleep periods to break the monotony. Whenever the torture machine allowed her a respite, she imagined the things she might do to Thallian if given a chance. Perhaps she would castrate him, a millimeter at a time, with a slow-burn laser. Or simply destroy his beautiful face with her knives. She hated herself while she hated him, because she thought she had loved him once.
Sometimes a medical tech would come to check the needle in her hand or to adjust the flow of nourishment. It occurred to her to beg them to help her escape, but she decided against it. With her thoughts scrambled, Thallian could outguess her every move. When he fi
nally suggested the techs as an escape route, Raena only laughed at him. Her acceptance of her fate confused, then enraged Thallian. Thankfully, he grew bored with taunting her.
Left alone, her mind played tricks. Sometimes the walls crept inward though she watched to keep them in place. Sometimes she imagined she saw far-off occurrences as though she participated in them. Thus she stood on the deck of the Emperor’s flagship as it neared the Arbiter. She listened to the Emperor discuss her fate with his advisors. The only mercy that interested her now was death. She hoped someone would insist on that.
* * *
The trial was a joke. Raena had difficulty restraining her amusement. She wanted to applaud after they read the death toll. She took full responsibility but stopped short of saying she’d do it all again. Execution should have been a foregone conclusion.
The best part of the whole experience was watching Thallian try to defend her. He requested frequent conferences with the judges. She wished she knew what offers he’d made—what promises—bartering for her.
In the end, after the death sentence had been handed down, the Emperor called everyone into the high judge’s chambers. Head held high, Raena marched into the opulent room, dwarfed by the armored Imperial guards. She felt eerily calm and triumphant. Death—escape—was close at hand.
Thallian and Marchan, the Emperor’s pet and Thallian’s chief rival, entered the room and took their places on either side of their master. The Emperor grinned at her like she was his next meal. “What a chase you’ve led us on, little girl. Now you are returned at last.”
She smiled. She waited to be shot down on the carpet so thick that it felt spongy beneath her boots.
“You’re too valuable an asset, Zacari, to be executed like a common conspirator.”
She didn’t understand what he was saying, but felt Thallian’s burning anger. Only later did she understand that she was the Emperor’s weapon against Thallian. Everyone knew Thallian was jealous of Marchan, that he might resort to anything to advance to his rival’s position. Raena hadn’t yet grasped that she was the only thing that Thallian wanted more.
At a signal from their master, the Imperial guards turned on her. Their staves arced as they touched her. Plasma swarmed over her like a black cloud, paralyzing her bit by bit.
Her last sight was Thallian’s eyes. He knew he was being tested. He made the choice to excel. Raena could look to him for no rescue. Relieved, she surrendered consciousness.
* * *
When she woke, she lay on the cold stone floor of a cavernous room. A shaft of light draped her, thinning as the soldiers outside the tomb replaced its slab. She stumbled toward them, knowing her strength could not possibly equal theirs.
The light thinned to a sliver, filtering around the edges of the stone. As she watched, darkness became absolute. She moaned.
She ran at full speed toward where she remembered the slab to be and attacked the rough black rock with her bare hands. The Emperor’s words echoed within her. They decreed a punishment more horrible than becoming Thallian’s slave, more terrifying than death. They sentenced her to imprisonment in the dark tombs of the Templar cemetery world.
As she sank to the smooth black floor, her knee knocked something over. Raena crawled after it, stubbing her fingers on the hard stone until she found the electric torch they’d left her. She sat in the utter stillness, staring around in the torch’s even emerald glow. Its power would drain soon enough. Until then, she would watch the walls to keep them from creeping inward.
* * *
Story told at last, Raena got up from the chair in Jain’s cell and stretched. It felt good to have finally shared the memories with someone else. She felt like she had been carrying them alone for a long time. Only now that the story was told did she wonder that neither Ariel nor Gavin had asked her for it. They’d watched the record of her trial and they knew where she served her sentence. But neither of them had really wanted to know what it was like.
“What are you going to do to me?” Jain asked.
Raena decided he deserved to know. “We’re going to return you to your family.”
“In pieces? The ransom won’t be paid.”
“I never intended it should be.”
He eyed her and read something in her honesty that he hadn’t expected. “You never even asked for it, did you?”
“No.”
“Why the ordeal with the camera then? Did you actually make a recording?”
“Yes. I thought you could give me something I could use. See how the Emperor inspired me? I saw you as a pawn against your father, but I realized that you were right. He will kill you if he thinks you’ve collaborated with me. So I’ve made a way for you to go home, if that’s what you want.”
He didn’t even ask what other options he might have. “I have to go home.”
“Then your survival depends on how well you lie to him. Don’t tell him that you ran from me. Don’t tell him I held you prisoner. Tell him I died in custody.”
“It won’t matter.” Jain sighed. “He won’t rest ’til he screws your corpse.”
Raena laughed. “If I didn’t know he had his own private cloning lab, I’d offer to cut off a finger. Send you home with a relic he could enshrine in his bedroom. But I shudder to think what he’d do to my clone.”
It was Jain’s turn for a bitter laugh.
* * *
Sobering, Jain pointed out, “You didn’t really answer my question. Why, if he knew where you were, if he wanted you that much, did my father wait to send for you until you’d gotten out of the tomb?”
“Because he was afraid, Jain.” Zacari watched him to gauge how he’d take the news. “At first he was afraid to disappoint the Emperor. He knew his loyalty was under scrutiny.”
“But after the Emperor was executed?”
“Has Jonan ever left home since he came crawling back? He is afraid of the rest of the galaxy, afraid he’ll be punished for all the fun he had torturing and killing back in the day. He is afraid to be mocked. As long as he’s holed up, he can play king, respected, feared, and obeyed. If he came out, he’d have to face the truth. The galaxy sees him as a villain.”
Jain knew he should speak up and defend his father, but he had the sinking feeling that she was right. He’d never seen his father as ruled by fear. It explained a lot of things.
The realization ached. He’d always studied his father’s behavior, but now he felt as though he’d never understood the man. He hadn’t ever been as close to his father as Raena had been and never been allowed as much time alone with him.
“Jain,” she said gently, “you wouldn’t have wanted my place.”
“I’m his favorite son,” he said softly. It felt like betraying a confidence, but he knew every word he’d listened to had been a betrayal.
“That’s never protected you,” Zacari reminded him as she left the cell.
Jain tried to hold onto his hatred of Raena Zacari. He’d seen the recording of her trial. He knew she had done terrible things while fleeing his father: killed men, destroyed ships and property. Jain had seen her kill the soldiers on Kai. He’d watched her squash Uncle Revan like a bug. She was a villain, too.
And hadn’t she deserved to be used by his father, since she was merely a runaway slave? It didn’t matter that his father hadn’t known that; it didn’t stop being true.
Jain closed his eyes. He wasn’t a slave, but his father had beaten him. He’d suffered broken bones and humiliation in order to please his father.
Zacari had held Jain prisoner for two days, eating ship’s rations and able to exercise. She hadn’t even struck him. The only real torture she’d inflicted on him had been the isolation, so that he’d come to anticipate and even enjoy her visits.
Jain shuddered. Now that he saw it for what it really was, what she had done to him had been very subtle. She had broken his faith in himself, his faith in his father and his family. She’d done it in the gentlest way possible, but she’d changed him fore
ver. And she’d done it intentionally.
Because she wanted him as an ally.
Because she wanted him to persuade his father to let her go.
Jain could imagine how well that would go over. His father would probably raise the Arbiter and mobilize all hands to go after her now. He would never leave her alone. Even Raena knew it.
Jain only hoped that once he got safely home, he could stay behind as everyone else trooped dutifully to his death. He never wanted to leave home again. He most certainly didn’t want to get between those two. He wondered if he should ask her to mutilate him, so he’d have an excuse to stay behind.
* * *
Of course Mykah let Raena take her pick of the arsenal. He helped her carry a crate of miscellaneous weaponry back to the escape pods. Since there wasn’t room for both of them to work inside, Raena crawled in. Mykah handed guns through the hatch to her.
“There are no restraints in the escape pod,” he pointed out, “other than the crash web.”
“I won’t need anything more than that,” Raena assured him. “I’ve got him tamed.”
Mykah scowled at her skeptically. “I saw the recording of what he did to that engineer. I’m not saying that the kid can take you, but your attention might wander on the way down to the planet.”
She continued to fit weapons into the nooks Vezali had created behind the padding on the escape pod’s walls. “I’m more worried that Coni’s going to stage a mutiny in my absence and take off with the transport. I don’t want to get stranded down there.”
Mykah laughed. “Coni throws a lot of attitude, but this crew is a democracy. We’ll come back to pick you up. We want to see how this story plays out. And we owe you for giving us this sweet old ship.”
She smiled at him. It transformed her face and made her almost pretty. “Thanks, Mykah. But really, if you see any ships in that system that aren’t carrying me, wipe the transport down and ditch it the first chance you get. Thallian is a grudge-carrying bastard. You do not want to try to prank him.”
“You’re doing it,” Mykah pointed out.
“Yeah, but I’m also his greatest weakness.” She laughed when she said it, but Mykah figured that didn’t make it any less true. He and the crew had been watching her tell her story to the kid. The vulnerability with which she confessed her past humanized her more than anything else she’d done on board.
