by Greg Dragon
Marian tucked her hand away and tried to summon breath back into her lungs.
It wasn’t a month ago that she had thrown the ring at Rafian with disgust, and had thought about chucking it into the sea just to spite him. Now she was hearing that it was a one-of-a-kind, a relic borne from a majestic dragon creature that had been made extinct by the enemy.
She cleared her throat and forced a smile. “So, the help thing. I—I need the help of you and the other fighters on Lochte. One of our moons was struck by a scortchet bomb,” she said.
“You don’t say?” the Ranalos said. “The first place they dropped one of those was right here in the great sand ocean of Lochte, Wife of Raf.”
“It’s Marian, actually,” she corrected him, and then felt foolish for doing it immediately.
“If you want people to stop questioning your identity, you may want to use the moniker I gave you,” he replied slowly to drive his point home. You mean the moniker Blu gave me, Marian thought, but then she nodded and motioned for him to continue. “Why ask us? We are on a different planet. We aren’t exactly close to you, Wife of Raf,” he said.
Marian replied, “The resistance here and on our moon has been decimated. This includes our small towns, our Mera Ku monks, and our hideouts. The Fels are routinely hunting and killing any rebels they come across, and I need your help because someone has to get our friends off of that moon. Several of us met and planned to do it, but many were captured and now face execution.”
“I see that nothing has changed for your needy planet,” the Ranalos said, looking at someone off-screen and laughing at something they said. “Will there be Fels to kill, or is this one of those weak missions where some self-important shaal tells us that casualties should be kept to a minimum?”
“This is my detail, and I’m no shaal – whatever that means. I want your desert raiders to bathe in Felitian blood. There are no rules where they are concerned, so if you can come in, rescue my friends, and kill the Fels, Tyhera will owe you the biggest of favors.”
The Ranalos smiled and nodded, then looked off screen and laughed. “You’re like him, you know? You’re like your husband. They call me Illi, the desert drake. I fought with Rafian when he came to Lochte and won Samael his city back. I don’t know if he spoke about us when he was alive, but we had good times back then.”
Marian wondered if she should tell Illi that Rafian was alive but thought better of it.
“Why don’t you tell me the coordinates of the prisoners on that moon,” Illi said, as if reading her thoughts. “And we will see what we can do in the upcoming week.”
Memory 11
Life was grand for Sergeant Grei Rielles, at least life after his career as a Veece trooper. What felt like a lifetime of writing citations, kicking down rebel doors, and kowtowing to decorated men half his age had led to a retirement fully paid for by the city of Veece. His pension afforded him a large house near the Emperor’s palace, several acres of Tyheran land, and five serviceable worker droids that kept the place spotless.
There were times when the old job would require his services—being that he knew better than most how the law worked—but they always paid him, and it was normally something small like making a holo call or looking over some paperwork. Recently he had been brought in to examine fragments from an alien bullet. The young trooper that had been shot with it swore that he had come across a woman with near-red skin and solid black eyes who used alien weaponry. There were no beings on any of the twelve planets that matched those features so they had settled on it being a disguise: perhaps a new organization that was helping the rebels.
Grei was retired but he had been a lifelong trooper, and most of the time he found it entertaining to laugh at how soft the new generation was. Another incident that had made some waves was the capture of a nest of rebels. Apparently the rebels too had grown soft over time, since the number they had brought in was significant. Still, it was remarkable, and a testament to the Red Lord’s insistence that all rebels meet the bullet of a pistol.
He sat in the lobby of the hotel, sipping on his beer and waiting for his Primian courtesan to return. This was one of his favorite things about being a retired widower on an elite Veece pension. The galaxy was his oyster, and most importantly, the galaxy’s women were his banquet.
The beautiful, olive-colored courtesan walked in, her hips swaying rhythmically below a sheer, beaded frock. Her outfit left little to the imagination and all eyes were on her shape as she walked—seeming to float—back to the fat, grizzled, old Tyheran who was too busy ogling another Primian to notice her. As she approached him her moves became robotic, and she placed the large bowl of cheese balls on a small table and wormed her way into his arms. Normally Grei would have picked up on this change in her demeanor, but he only seemed to notice her when she touched him.
“Ahh, there you are, Delyi. I was starting to think someone had stolen you,” he joked.
“No one would dare,” the beauty replied in broken Tyheran with a sugary sweet voice. There was something off about it though, and Grei held her back and stared at her.
“You’re acting all fidgety. What’s going on with you, baby doll?”
She leaned into him and whispered, “I was stopped. W-we’re in a lot of trouble.”
“What do you mean, ‘a lot of trouble?’ Who in the ferut would dare?” he cursed.
“A Tyheran lady, a very mean and direct one, who—” her explanation was broken by his laughter as Grei exploded after imagining a Tyheran woman admonishing his girl for her job and status. He found it so funny that he almost choked.
“A Tyheran lady, you say? And here I thought there was real trouble. Oh, come on girl, you may as well have told me that you stubbed your toe. Is that what took you so long? I should dock your pay, you stupid an—”
“I’m wearing a bomb, and she will detonate it if you attempt to run away from me or cause a scene,” Delyi said suddenly. Her eyes were wide and her fingers were on a mission to dig themselves into his bicep. “She said to tell you that she is a professional, way beyond anyone’s caliber that you have seen. Cross her in any way and she will collapse the hotel and then find your son and use him for her needs instead.”
“She knows about my son,” Grei said softly. There was an invisible hand clutching his heart and what felt like a second hand with claws clutching his stomach. “Wh—what does she want?” he asked, looking into the pretty woman’s face for the first time.
“She’s in this room,” Delyi replied and then scribbled down a number on a piece of paper.
Grei read the note and looked past Delyi at the off-yellow wall of the lobby. Threats were nothing new, even to family members; chances were this woman was an ex-flame looking to extort him. There had been extortions in the past, and all he had to do then—like he intended to do now—was to remind her how connected he was as an ex-trooper. “I was getting bored sitting down here anyhow,” he said out loud.
He stood up, tucked in his shirt, and touched Delyi on the waist, then escorted her to the elevators. He looked around to see if he could see who the mysterious Tyheran lady was. But the lobby was packed, and though some looked suspicious, none seemed to be the one that was threatening him. “Let’s go see who mystery lady number five is that needs my money. Sorry about this baby doll, it was supposed to be all about you tonight.” He didn’t notice that despite her terror, Delyi rolled her eyes.
They stepped into the elevator and rode it up to the eighth floor. When they stepped off and walked to the room, they found the door ajar and pushed it open to go inside. As soon as Delyi passed the threshold, a foot came out of nowhere and kicked her onto the bed. A hand came up and around to muffle Grei’s cries and a single bullet was delivered to Delyi, stopping her movement instantly as she struggled to turn around. Grei felt as if it was the last few moments of his life, so he struggled to fight back, despite the firm grip the person had on him.
He felt the force of his attacker pushing him forward and a
s he spun to see his face, the sound of a pistol being fired caught his ear and the world went dark in an instant.
~ * ~
Marika picked up the woman named Delyi and injected her with a clear liquid. She woke up shaking and crying, then tried to scream when she saw her Casanian features.
“Hush up before I shoot you with a live round. Do you understand me?” she asked the girl, who nodded quickly after clasping her hands to her mouth. Marika saw the subtle differences in her features that separated her race from the Tyherans. She had beautiful, smooth skin, but on the surface it had a pattern, very similar to scales. She reached down and touched her arm—too curious not to—and her skin was soft to the touch.
Marika had other curiosities and the woman recognized this and relaxed herself to let the assassin carry out her investigation. When she realized that her lustful curiosity had gotten the better of her, Marika refocused and gently removed the woman’s hands from her mouth.
“You don’t need to fear me. I came for him,” Marika said, reaching behind her ear and removing the tiny bomb she had clipped there.
“What are you?” Delyi asked, and Marika sat next to her and relaxed her shoulders.
“Even if I wanted to tell you that, beautiful, it would go right over your head. I’m not from here, but you probably figured that. I know you take money from that slob so that he can thype you, but none of that will be going on tonight, so we need to discuss your silence.”
“What is thype?” Delyi asked. She glanced at Grei’s slumped over body, as if the answer would come from it.
Marika made an obscene gesture with her hands to demonstrate to Delyi what she meant. Delyi smiled and nodded happily.
So that makes you happy, eh? Marika thought, then touched the Primian’s cheek gently. “If you can keep your mouth shut, I will not hurt you,” Marika said to her, and Delyi gestured that her lips were sealed.
“I have no cause to be loyal to him, or any of the men who pay for our services,” she said. “This one is aggressive and calls us animals. He breaks the rules, does things that our master disallows, but then we cannot talk about it.”
“Oh yeah? So this one is a real slime ball, is that what you’re telling me?” Marika asked. “And what do you mean by ‘our’ master? Are you some sort of slave?”
Delyi raised the frock to reveal her upper thigh, then bent over and showed Marika a black band with a jewel. To outsiders, this would have seemed to be a decorative part of her ensemble, but it was a digital link, one that kept track of her so that her master—whomever he/she was—could find her if she tried to escape.
“Why don’t you just take it off?” Marika asked.
Delyi sat back up on the bed and shrugged. “Even if I tamper with it, they would know. But they aren’t completely cruel to us; we can eventually buy our way out of service,” she said, smiling.
Marika narrowed her eyes into slits and stared at her. The girl seemed to smile at everything. It was off-putting, and it seemed to serve as a cover for her true emotions. It reminded her of Meluvian servant girls who were trained that “men like smiles.” But she was not a man, and it annoyed her that Delyi was smiling when she had just threatened her life.
“What’s the youngest girl that you’ve seen buy her freedom, whatever your name is?”
“It’s Delyi, and the youngest was …” She paused as if thinking, then put her face into her hands and sat back, feeling foolish. “I haven’t met anyone who has saved up the one hundred Felitian credits,” she finally said.
“That’s what I thought. Hold still,” Marika said, and then slipped the blade of her las-sword beneath the band and powered it on with the edge pointing away from her skin and on the band. The edge of the blade became a white-hot laser, and the black bland fell away from her leg as if it was paper.
“MAKER!” Delyi squealed and then her face grew white with fear. “Put it back on. We have to put it back on!” she argued, reaching for the band and trying to put it back in place on her leg.
Marika snatched it from her and then walked over to Grei and placed it on his ankle beneath his sock.
“Freed slaves are normally worthless, too broken to embrace their independence. Please tell me you won’t be one of those,” Marika said, as she stood up in the middle of the disheveled room, looking down at Delyi. “You owe me the life-debt. Does your race believe in that?”
Delyi brushed back her thick black hair, and through icy blue eyes regarded Marika. She regained her composure. “Every being on Luca abides by the law of the galaxy in one way or another, stranger. We were slaves because of a life-debt and having freed me, I am your slave now. The master will still hunt me down to kill me for what you’ve done, but it is all part of His plan,” she said, looking up to indicate her deity as Marika shook her head.
“Look, sister, you belong to yourself: that is my charge to you. I freed you to keep your mouth shut about what I did to your disgusting boyfriend over there. If you can promise me that, I will drop you off at any location that you wish. You do have family, friends or whatever, don’t you?” she asked.
“You would seriously do that for me?” Delyi asked in turn, her voice taking on a stronger base than before.
“Look, I get it, I know more about you than you would believe, and despite my training demanding otherwise, I am going to help you,” Marika said.
“But you don’t know me, and I doubt you need me. Why would you do anything for me?”
“Let’s just say that the last time I had a chance to rescue a prostitute, I hesitated, and I have to live with that schtill for the rest of my life, okay? Plus, you’re a woman, and this planet has some sort of macho schtill going on. If I can disrupt that nonsense in any way, you better believe that I’m doing it. Maker, if Anstractor was anything like this, I would be dead a long time ago.”
Delyi seemed to barely understand what Marika was going on about but she understood “rescue” and “maker,” which she assumed meant that Marika was going to help her to make things right with her god.
“Thank you, Sha’an,” she whispered with a bow.
“Of course. We girls look out for each other, right?” Marika replied, and Delyi smiled, nodding her head. “Alright, so look inside the closet and you will find some clothes that should fit. Go take a long bath, and listen to some music, but stay in there for about an hour. When you’re ready, get dressed, come back here and if I am not here, I want you to wait for me. Understand?” she asked, and Delyi nodded again.
“I need you to stay with me for a few days to watch over this place when I’m not here. When I am done with my mission, I will take you to your people, and then you can start a new life away from masters, whore-mongers, and this gods-forsaken city.”
~ * ~
When Grei opened his eyes, he found himself seated on the soft, round chair of a hotel room. It was still nighttime and he could hear the courtesan in the bathroom, listening to music from the Veece orchestra and singing loudly with it. She had the voice to go along with the harmonious melody that the string instruments produced. He didn’t realize that she had such a talent. She could moan and scream with the best of them, but singing? She had never given him the pleasure of hearing it.
As he looked around, he realized that he had no control over his body—he remembered sitting with Delyi in the lobby, the bomb threat from a woman, maybe an ex, then riding the elevator and then … nothing. The sensation was one of numbness and it frightened him to the point where he wanted to scream bloody murder and cry. A pretty alien stepped out in front of him, and he immediately realized that she matched the description of the troopers report a few nights ago. She was in an all-black, tight, outfit, and in her hand was a knife that had dried blood on it.
“Hello Sergeant Grei, legendary router of the resistance. My name is Marika Tsuno, and I would like to ask you a favor,” she said. A cruel, fanged smile was plastered on her face, and his heart began to race as he realized how helpless he was against her.
> “What do you need to know?” he asked.
“I need you to think about your life and what it means to you in comparison to a handful of resistance men and women inside your cells,” she said, pacing in front of him impatiently while playing with the knife.
“You mean the new ones they captured? Hey, I don’t have anything to do with that. I’m retired, for Maker’s sake. You captured the wrong trooper. I have nothing to do with that!” he screamed.
“You’re a decorated example for any young Veece noble that wants to join the militia. Your life, well no, your happiness and wealth, is a symbol to the troopers. If I were to kill you, or more specifically, if the troopers were to allow me to kill you, that would be disastrous for their recruitment, wouldn’t it?” she asked, stopping to see what he would say.
“Of course it would. It’s not easy to get people into the ranks as it is. If those boys and girls felt that their city didn’t reward them or kept them safe in retirement, well, they wouldn’t sign up,” he barked back, but caught himself when he realized he had said too much.
“Here’s the deal. I am going to turn on this holo-recorder. I want you to tell the trooper chief that I intend to skin you slowly until you bleed to death unless he releases the rebels that are being held in his cells, no later than tomorrow afternoon. I want them released into the woods south of here; they are to be dropped off by a shuttle. I want them to be left alone, and then I will take your body out of stasis and allow you to go free.”
