by Greg Dragon
She heard the man screaming and the panic that ensued when she teleported right in front of them. The Lucan rebels did not know what to think; she heard the chairs being overturned as they jumped to their feet and she shook her head, disappointed she’d had to show them Phaser secrets.
Marian walked gracefully through the cave and back to the room where Blu and company were shouting in a panic. They looked at her as if she was a ghost. Without saying anything as they stared at her in awe, she held up the blade and walked towards the Daltak.
“So, are we ready to make some plans, or do I need to prove myself to another piece of schtill like this worthless Daltak here?” she asked.
Memory 4
“I’m sorry, Lady Raf,” Blu said once everyone had left, and it was only the two of them beneath the entrance.
“Don’t be. They have every right to be suspicious of me, especially with the length of time that Rafian and I have been gone. You’ve been a true friend, Blu … there must be something you need or want that I can use to pay you back,” she said.
“Lady Raf, how many times am I going to have to tell you to drop it? I helped you because of Rafian. He would have done the same if our roles were reversed,” he said, and she thought that his hulking form looked menacing beneath the limited light.
She stepped past him towards the outside of the cave and stared up at the giant moon of Talula. It stood above them like an unblinking eye, bright and uncontested by any of the other stars and planets. It also provided them with light on the outside of the cave since they dared not use a flashlight or torch.
Marian thought of the planet Vestalia on Anstractor, which was a similar planet to Tyhera in both look and inhabitants. Humans and Tyherans were practically twins in appearance, but Vestalia had become a disfigured planet due to the years of war with the Geralos.
There was nowhere on Anstractor that could compete with Luca in terms of beauty, Marian thought—at least in her opinion. Talula glowed above them, and there were no clouds to hide the bright pattern of stars that seemed to dominate everything. She could see the planets Hostera, Coryen, and Vur. They hung above her, tiny but visible, unlike the night sky of Vestalia which would reveal a moon and little else.
“If we all could understand what we have here, we’d throw down our weapons and learn to get along,” Marian said sadly. Blu walked up next to her, staring upwards, and then nodded his head in earnest.
“That’s the thing, Lady Raf, we don’t take these moments to reflect like you do. I’m as guilty of that as anybody else here. How could we? I wager we spend more time glancing behind us for Fel daggers than looking forward to see where we’re going. Life has gotten harsher since you left. Stay here long enough and you will understand.”
Marian said, “It’s not much different in Anstractor, Rafian’s galaxy. The planets fight a common foe, which makes it similar but our—I mean, his people…” She stopped to find the words in Tyheran. “They lost their planet home, Blu.”
“What do you mean, lost it?” the large man asked, a look of confusion on his flat, featureless face.
“Imagine, Blu. Imagine that Palus was Vurian and not Tyheran. Imagine that he started a genocide of the Tyheran people because he believed we are inferior, and that our skins had magical properties. Imagine that he had the entire planet of Vur to stand behind him in this assertion, and they came through, slaughtered us all, and then took over Tyhera, enslaving the survivors.”
“But, I am from Deij, not Tyhera. What would Palus do with the aliens like me who call this place home?” Blu asked.
“That’s the thing, Blu; that wouldn’t matter. The fact that you aren’t born from Vur would mean that he’d either kill you here or on Deij when he goes there next to harvest bodies. In Anstractor there is a race called the Geralos. Their features are similar to Deijens but they are green, shorter, and … scaly,” she began.
“I don’t see how they are similar to us at all. We are a proud and kind race, Lady Raf. Though some have been imprisoned and made slaves to the Felitians – but you know this!” Blu snapped, annoyed at the comparison Marian was suggesting.
“No, no, no, I dare not say you are the same, Blu. I’m sorry. What I meant is that their planet is similar, very wet and tropical. The air there, you and I cannot breathe, but—they look like green, miniature Deijens, with wicked teeth meant for biting and plotting cruel things.”
Blu was still staring at Marian and she couldn’t help but feel unsettled, like his words did not match up with what he might actually be feeling. He stood staring for what seemed like a lifetime, then folded his arms into his robes and stared at the sky once again.
“Rafian is fighting these terrible men and women right now?” he asked.
“Yes, he has been fighting them since he was a child, if I’m not mistaken,” Marian replied.
“This doesn’t surprise me,” Blu said. “He was a natural at war, and I found it hard to believe that our rough, rudimentary training in Cally could produce someone as gifted as he.”
“Really?” Marian asked.
“Yes. It was bizarre, and like I said, many thought he was a gift from the maker, come down to help topple the Fels. When the Mera Ku monks took him in, he grew even stronger. You know this firsthand, correct?”
Marian rubbed her neck unconsciously and nodded.
“Will he ever come back here?” Blu asked suddenly, and Marian froze, trying to find ground between her anger with her husband and the adoration that everyone else had for him.
“Ugh, he will, Blu. He has his hands full, but part of his heart is here in Luca. He will not stay away for long,” she replied, wondering if she was telling him a lie.
They stood next to one another, watching tiny ships cross the sky and then all of a sudden, Blu grabbed her and pulled her back into the shadows of the cave. Marian made to struggle but could do nothing to escape the clutches of the tall, strong man. She tried to get to her knife, but he had her arms pinned, so she wiggled her face free of his hand to scream at him. He quickly covered her mouth and pointed to an area of the sky where a tiny white star looked as if it was getting closer.
“Fels!” he whispered and rushed back into the cave.
Marian stared at the star as it took on the shape of a drop ship. It was moving fast, and she could tell that it was headed somewhere near their area. She reached down and touched her leg where the knife was, then exhaled with relief when she felt it. Blu returned with his cat and then touched her shoulder and pointed to the back.
“There’s a tunnel we made in case we got discovered, Lady Raf. I have to collapse the cave; there is too much at stake for us to risk it,” he said.
“Blu, if Fels are onto us it means that one of the people we brought here was a mole,” she began.
“No! None of them are. We have always met, and we have always executed plans. The people here tonight have too much hate for Palus Felitious to make deals with him. Someone else must have figured us out. Perhaps they followed you here from the city.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Marian said. “I came here via teleportation, the same way I showed you earlier.”
“Then I am out of ideas,” he said. “That ship will drop soldiers, and we will be killed or captured. So let’s save the speculation for later. We need to take the tunnel and collapse the cave in order to avoid discovery,” Blu said, pulling her away from the cave’s entrance.
She ran behind him through the darkness to the front door of his actual home. They slipped through, powered down the lights, and then Blu triggered an explosion that shook the floor and the walls to the point where Marian had to catch herself from falling. He then began scrambling, piling his belongings into a moving capsule. When it was full, he collapsed it into a small, travel-sized cube, and then popped open another one to add more of his books, tablets, and illegal weapons.
Marian helped, and thought to herself how Anstractor could use the technology of the moving capsule. It was so convenient: it could take
items that would require a transport to move from one place to the next and fold it all into the size of a small, weightless box.
They packed five cubes and then Blu touched a panel on the wall. A portion of the rock slid to the side and a narrow passage was revealed.
“Nemesis. Shah, G’toh!” he shouted at the cat and she bounded to the passageway, looked back at Blu and then slowly began walking into it. Blu then fanned impatiently at his server android, and she perked up, ran over to them, and then followed the cat into the passageway.
“Are we forgetting anyone else?” Marian asked with a hint of sarcasm in her voice, and Blu smiled at her—if one could tell a Deijen’s smile from their otherwise stoic expression—and then walked behind them into the darkness.
When Marian heard machines working at clearing the cave’s entrance, she imagined it was the Felitian Troopers, determined to find out who was inside. This meant that they were tipped off and a sinking feeling washed over her stomach. She took one look behind, then quickly followed Blu into the darkness.
Once they had walked for several yards, Blu triggered another explosion, and a wave of heat blew past Marian.
“What was that, Blu?” she asked.
“That was my home of several years, being destroyed to cause a cave-in to kill the intruders that would see me in chains. This is the life of a freedom fighter, Lady Raf. We keep our homes rigged in explosives. You never know when they will come for you, and when they do you must be prepared to die, or give up everything for the resistance.”
“Where will you stay now, Blu?” Marian asked as they pushed on through the blackness.
“I will visit Orion Zee, in the jungle. He has a hideout there that the Fels have yet to discover. Nemesis will love it there, since he has other cats living with him that she can be around. What about you, Lady Raf? What do you intend on doing until the rebels are ready?”
“I will be doing a bit of spying on my old neighborhood, and plotting an area where I can get at Palus to kill him,” she said.
“You are very confident,” he said after some time.
“I’m a Phaser,” Marian replied and didn’t bother to explain what that meant to him.
~ * ~
Marika Tsuno was a Casanian assassin. On Anstractor this gave her an edge because Casanians were considered to be the docile, artisan race of the galaxy. This was how she managed to become a famous gun-for-hire during the time when Vestalians were too occupied with the Geralos to care.
She’d had so many contracts to fill throughout her career that there was scarcely a time she was on location for leisure. A tragic childhood that became a short lifetime as a gangster had gotten her into the assassin’s guild. It suited her, the love and care for life being null and void in her dark mind, until her guild was wiped out by Rafian VCA and his Phasers.
In Rafian she saw a similarity that she hadn’t seen in many others, and it was due to their shared outlook on life. She tried to fight him on their first meeting, but he had been a step ahead of her in every way. He was supposed to kill her —she was a part of a unit that slaughtered humans and Geralos alike— but he spared her, and she bent the knee and handed him her knife.
While she loved Marian, she belonged to him. If there was anything she kept in terms of her Casanian blood, it was the honoring of a life debt.
Sneaking off and escaping to Luca had been Marian’s idea. It was a rash and dangerous move that would have gotten her killed and her records wiped from the cloner had she been anyone else. But, she was wife to the supreme leader, and unbeknownst to her, he had tasked the assassin to stick by her side and keep her safe.
Marika had agreed, but only if she could do it on her own terms. Rafian didn’t know the terms, but they were the kind that satiated Marika’s lustful desires and curiosity. How many other Phasers could say they shared the supple lips of Marian VCA with the supreme leader? She smiled wickedly at the thought. A good assassin must always have leverage, even on the most trusted of employers.
When Marian had slipped off towards the Starport earlier that day, Marika had gone back inside the house and collected her clothes. She dressed herself in an all-black 3B suit with a heavy black coat over it. On her face, she wore a mask to hide her distinct features.
She stood in front of the mirror in their bathroom and thought she looked menacing. It was hard to suppress the smile that crossed her full, dark lips, since she found her outfit to be quite amusing.
“Oh, this would frighten any little would-be snitch,” she muttered to herself as she turned one way and shifted to stick out her hip. She popped it to the other side, pulling her las-sword free with the same motion. “Yeah, they won’t see you coming, will they, killer?” she whispered and then spun to exit the bathroom and made her way outside.
She hopped onto one of the hover bikes that was parked near the house, then tested the controls. They were alien to her but not so complicated that she couldn’t figure them out. Touching the comm on her arm, a holographic image of Tyhera hovered in front of her. She used a gloved finger to slide it around, and took note where the city of Veece stood along with the ruins of Cally.
With a kick of a pedal and a few button presses, the bike lifted her steadily into the air. She sped towards Veece, flying recklessly past tall, branchless trees, which looked like logs planted in the ground. Marika kept an assortment of guns that she favored for killing her marks, but the one she brought for this trip was a rifle. An ugly, black, shiny machine with a barrel so long that it stretched past her shoulders to another three feet above her head.
If they were to assassinate a galactic despot, she would need to master the hunting grounds. There would be guards, but she would be ready for them if they were in the way. She set the bike down near a humming dome that stood out like a silver pimple in the orange and brown grass that popped up from everywhere. She dismounted and left the rifle, choosing instead to grab a knife and pistol while sinking low to the ground so that the grass could mask her approach.
The cloak she wore was cumbersome but warm, and though she wanted to throw it off, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Casan was a warm, desert planet, and her thin skin was not doing well with the winter of Tyhera. She stopped at about twenty yards and dropped, listening to the whistling wind, the caw of strange birds, and the chirping of insects. This was an alien planet and she needed to learn its sounds. She stood there for a long moment with her face near the dirt, muscles taut, and ears listening and adapting.
When she thought she had the natural sounds memorized enough to track foreign ones, she rose again and approached the dome. It was a resource-gathering mill, and it had an alien insignia that she wasn’t able to read. She knew what it was doing, and she looked around and saw several more like it, pulling up minerals from below. This was the equipment of a crafter, so there would be no need for soldiers trolling the area. She ran back to her bike and resumed her ride through the trees and toward the city.
Marika reached Veece another hour after leaving the resource farm. It appeared suddenly before her, when she almost rode the bike off the side of a steep hill. The trees had obscured her approach, but with her reflexes she was able to avert disaster and take advantage of the location.
She pulled out a stand, touched two lights on its side, and rammed it into the ground at the top of the hill. She then attached the rifle, locking in the appropriate holds and then lay on her stomach and placed her right eye on the scope.
Veece was buzzing, and she could see people going about their daily lives within the beautiful arched entrances to the walled city. The architecture reminded her of home. Casanians loved to carve and create arches. She saw diplomats, their alien slaves, and uniformed men and women she assumed were some sort of police.
She had to take a shot. Though it would seem reckless, she may need to use the rifle at a later date, and she had to make sure that the crystal jump from their galaxy hadn’t thrown off the calibration. She turned the weapon, found a ball that a child
had left on the street, exhaled slowly, and then depressed the trigger.
There was a split second of silence as the near-invisible shot found the ball and then it looked as if it vaporized. Marika lay still, daring not to move, but it appeared as if no one had seen the shot happen.
“You’re still accurate, big boy,” she whispered to her rifle, and then sat up and pulled her cloak in tighter.
Her hill was at the end of a thick bit of forestry. There was tall grass and lime-green flowers, large black rocks, and a brook. It was the perfect camping area for an assassin, and it made her wonder who else of the dark profession knew about it. This was an ancient planet with intelligent people. This meant that there would be assassins to hire, rich opportunists to kill, and the likelihood of a vantage point as amazing as hers being well known.
She weighed the odds. It was too good of a location to pass up, so she pulled out three shiny black orbs that were full of divots, somewhat like a golf ball. She threw one behind her, and another pair to either side. They would serve as radars to tell her if anything tried to sneak up. She then took some grass, and began to weave it into the grooves of her rifle.
The last thing Marika Tsuno did was to toss a crystal as far as she could towards the city. If a skilled assassin made it past her radar, she could always jump. She wasn’t looking forward to having any of them so close that she would need to consider it, but she wasn’t about to take any chances, not on this strange cold planet of Tyhera.
She thought to check in on Marian but decided not to. They were Phasers and they both knew what had to be done this day in order to prepare for the future. Marian trusted her to do what she was good at. Checking in would mean a lot of explanation, and the things she did could not be explained, not to one that knew little of the assassin’s way. Marian would hear from her when she was relaxing; for now, Marika must do what she knew how to do, and that was prepare for the perfect murder.
She laid back down, appearing as part of the bush to anyone who might fly above her or scan the area with binoculars. She knew how to blend and become invisible, and it allowed her to stay up there for the remainder of the day, watching Veece, and taking notes for the eventual tracking and killing of Palus Felitious.
