by Greg Dragon
Marian adjusted her position to prevent him from sitting next to her on the bench, and then averted her gaze as she spoke to Marika. The man realized that she was busy and disinterested, so he pretended to be looking for someone and then moved away to find another pretty target.
“I tell you, Rika, I forgot how absolutely irritating the men of my world can be,” Marian said when he was gone. “How is Blu? Is he okay?”
“Blu and the others are fine, Rhee; at least now they are. The Fels were keeping them awake for over 24 hours at a time, and they weren’t feeding them at all.”
“If only we could have predicted how low the Felitian organization would go. They were once a misunderstood tyranny that helped a number of people,” she reminisced sadly. “Now they’re just a network of thugs, causing pain and misery. Has anyone told you why the resistance came about against Palus?” she asked Marika, looking around to make sure that no one was near her to listen.
“No, I just know that they are bad and the resistance is good,” Marika replied.
“Well, at one time Tyhera was in chaos due to the leader of Apun, the country where I grew up. Criminals ran the planet, and the governments were paid to let it happen. How it got so bad, I don’t know, but my parents were victims as a result of it. My sister was taken by a gang warlord when she was in her teens, and my father—who isn’t a fighter—could do nothing about it but complain to the local Baron. Life was hell for them until Palus and his army started a coup to take over Apun.
“See, they were heroes to us during that time. They killed off the gangsters and assassinated the false leaders. When Palus named himself Emperor, he rewarded the faithful, and my father’s status grew as a result of this. Old prejudices and our twisted class system disallowed the Felitians from giving my father a title. They gave it to me instead, since they saw me as a child, born into the new world of the glorious Palus Felitious. I was too small and too ignorant to the world to realize that my blessing came at the cost of people’s lives.
“Pretty soon people stood up. They weren’t okay with one corrupt government being replaced with another. These were the freedom fighters and they seemed to have membership on all twelve planets. They have always been too small and too sparse to stop Palus, however. The few attempts at his life were ill-conceived and pathetic, so he got better defenses and stayed behind his shields where they couldn’t get him. In time they began to think that he was invincible, and so they became content with annoying him instead of trying to stop him.
“So here we are, the descendants of a planet torn to shreds by corruption. Palus is not truly Emperor of the galaxy like he says he is, but he does control Tyhera, the largest of the twelve planets.”
Marian sighed and stood up to walk. There was a strip of water that ran through the center of the city and it showcased numerous fountains of varying styles. She began to walk next to it, enjoying the sound of the water, as Marika stayed silent, expecting her to finish.
“And you expect to be the one that can get close to this invincible world-conqueror to kill him?” she asked, thinking for the first time that Marian had not thought things through. “Marian, have you any intel on where the man is, or where he will be in order to carry out your assassination?”
“No, not yet, Marika, but … I don’t know, I’ll figure it out.” Marian said with frustration.
“Well, until you do, I think that you had better cool yourself off.” Marika said.
Marian knew that Marika was right, but she felt time was running short. With Qeran Kyle being dead, Palus Felitious would act, and if that act involved a public appearance, she needed to be there to kill him.
“I know, Marika, and I am concentrating on helping Amanxa and the other rebels get off of this moon. Please tell Blu that we have to secure a hideout for them on Tyhera. They will not be safe on Talula once we bust them out.”
“That’s an easy enough mission. How do you feel otherwise?” Marika asked.
“Tired, and a little guilty for leaving Anstractor the way I did. I’m so mad at Raf, but I have friends who will miss me. I thought about his sister, Aurora, and her cute, bubbly personality. Silent Frank, my drinking buddy, and even your Val. I can be such an emotional little cruta sometimes, I swear,” she opined.
“That emotional little cruta is the Marian we know and love. Stop trying to change. I know that I miss my Val something vicious; he won’t stay out my mind. I want to wrap this up soon so that I can return home to him. You do understand, don’t you Rhee?”
“How about tonight?” Marian asked.
“You mean to jump out tonight? What about you? I can’t just leave you here—” Marika began.
“Maker’s sake, Marika, you’ve done enough for me here to cause me to owe you for several lifetimes. Look, my friends are free, and the Ranalos are on the way here. The pendulum is swinging and Palus won’t escape it. What I need more than anything else from you is—”
Marian stopped and sighed. “I’m almost out of crystals, and I need Raf or Tayden to send me some more. If you can bring back a couple of Phaser Aces, I would kiss you, but I need the crystals to get to Palus. Please do this last favor for me Marika, and I promise you the world.”
“You promise things that aren’t yours to give, Marian VCA, but I will not argue. Jumping back means I can at least see my Val, and I will get a handful of crystals to help you finish your mission.”
Tyhera was an amazing planet, and so were its people, but Marika had spilled so much blood that she could almost see the stains on her hands whenever she looked at them. When she was a blade for hire, she would meditate for hours and pray to the makers to wash the memories from her mind. It wasn’t a perfect solution to her chosen black art, but it was enough to allow her to sleep at night. Now it was different, and she could still see the image of Kyle’s face being shredded with the exploding column.
“Stay safe sister, until I return,” she said to Marian and then signed off before she could reply.
Marian walked out to the bridge to try and clear her mind, and to try to think of a way to catch up with Palus. A pair of lovers walked by and they looked very much like a statesman and his mistress. Marian smiled at them, but the man noticed it and mistook her grin for one of invitation.
“Would you like to join us?” the husky man asked, and the Tyheran courtesan touched Marian’s forearm affectionately.
“Not tonight, my friends,” she replied to him, and she could feel the cynic inside of her being held back from laughing.
The man nodded and slipped an arm around his beau, then walked back towards the hotel in the center of the city. The courtesan, a Primian, kept looking back at Marian with lingering looks of want. It made her suspicious until she realized that the sex worker was probably on her fifth course of mood altering drugs and aphrodisiacs.
She turned back to the bridge and looked across it. Evening was upon them and the pink waters were now as deep a purple as the skies. Several lights came on and revealed another set of lovers on a bench, too engrossed in their kissing to notice her staring.
She watched them for a very long time before she realized she was crying. It was an embarrassing discovery and she hurried back to her hotel. She had sent Marika back to Anstractor to see her lover and to collect important crystals for the rescue mission. But she hadn’t been entirely honest. She found herself missing the touch of her husband, and seeing his face and hearing his voice.
For all their arguing he would always come to her, and despite the hell that was going on in Luca, he had stayed ever-present in her mind the entire time. She would feel weak when she thought of being without him for the rest of her life, but then she would feel stupid when she thought about sharing him with the other women that he admitted to being with. But it was there, that feeling of compromise, that somehow he would change and they would work it out. Oh, the way he held her, with hands like steel, and the way she would revert to being that young, high-spirited Baroness whenever their lips would touch.
Most nights when she stirred, she reached for him, and whenever she did something amazing she had to remind herself that she couldn’t call him up to brag to him. She didn’t need Rafian VCA – she needed no one – but she wanted him badly: physically, emotionally, and everything else in between. Most of all, she wanted to know that he missed her as much as she missed him. She had reacted, but that was how she was and he loved her for it—he had said as much—so why hadn’t he jumped in to find her? Why hadn’t he chased her here to let her know that he couldn’t live without her?
She whispered his name with a curse, trying to summon the hate, but all she kept thinking about was the night when he whisked her away to make her his wife. She stepped through the sliding glass doors and onto the shiny, reflective tile of the hotel lobby. Her reflection showed a slender, beautiful woman whose wrapped up hair and tear-streaked face would draw attention from anyone looking. She kept her face hidden and pressed the button for the elevator, hoping with all her heart that it would arrive empty.
When the elevator finally got to the lobby, opening to reveal no one inside, Marian ran in and jabbed her finger on the button for the 22nd floor. The tears were out of control and she was beginning to bawl, but no one stopped its ascent as it rose up to her room. “Thank the makers,” she whispered aloud when the doors opened up and she was even happier to find the hallway empty. She ran to her room door, put the code into the locking mechanism, and dove onto her bed as if her life depended on it.
This was the first time in ages that she had allowed herself to cry, and she bawled audibly as the loneliness settled in. Marika had been a distraction, a distraction that was now gone, and she was angry and disappointed that they had been gone for near a month and Rafian had not come looking for her.
~ * ~
The next day the signal Marian had been waiting for showed up on her comm-link. The Ranalos skiff had landed somewhere between Jemi and Astuif, and the Ranalos had set up their camp in preparation for the battle. She stole a hover-bike from a rack near her hotel and with her bag strapped across her back and dressed in a blue 3B suit, she blazed down the long bridge out of Jemi and onto the hilly plains of Talula.
She rode past shepherds that were out with their flock and an enormous graveyard that was fenced in by rose bushes. The bike was not as fast as she would have liked but it moved her quickly away from the city. When she glanced back for what would have been the tenth time, she saw that her hotel was the only thing on the horizon. She stayed away from the forests and the wild thorny bushes, since there were many predators on Talula that made those places their home.
When Marian was a girl, her parents used to take her to visit Talula during the second month of the long Tyheran summer. She was very young when they decided to stop making the trips, so her last recollection of it all was sitting amidst yellow flowers that were so tall, they appeared as trees to her.
She’d run through them with her hands outstretched, bending the stalks as she ran and trying to imagine herself as a Talulan rabbit. Now as the hover-bike flew over the same flowers, she viewed them in a much different way than she had as a child. The flowers were beautiful but hardy, very much like their moon and the people that had come there to live.
After she had been riding for quite some time, she felt lonely and bothered by the same landscape she had just been admiring. There were no ships in the sky, and while the sun was out and it was bright, she could only see flowers and hills spread all the way through to the horizon. If not for the compass and map she had on her comm, she would have been completely lost out there, unaware of where she was.
She didn’t succumb to her fears and pushed on in the general direction of the camp that the Ranalso told her they were set up in. After a few more hours of flat nothingness, she could see a myriad of triangular tent tops on the horizon. She pulled up a comm-link and called the leader, Illi, who was the same man she had contacted on Lochte.
The comm kept on beeping for a long time, so she slowed the hover-bike to a crawl. She didn’t want to approach them without them knowing who she was, so she stayed outside of sniper range and whispered a silent prayer that Illi would pick up before his scouts discovered her.
The Ranalos answered the comm with a gruff, impatient voice, “Where are you at, Tyheran?”
“About 2,000 yards out from your campsite, Ranalos. Seriously, can we get past calling each other by our respective races and use names like friends are supposed to do?” Marian said.
“Of course, Lady Raf, we can do that. Now tell me which direction you’re coming from and I’ll tell the boys to ease up so you don’t get yourself dead,” he said.
Marian shook her head at the title Lady Raf. It was as if everyone in Luca wanted to remind her that she was only a circumstance of her legendary husband. She should be upset by it, especially after doing enough things without him to warrant her having a name. But she knew that when she had married him, she was the enemy, and not many of them had gotten the chance to get to know her for who she really was. She was still a stranger to them, and all they knew about her was that she was married to a man they loved very much.
“I’m coming from the east, Illi,” Marian said.
“Coming from the island city, eh?” said the Ranalos, and she could feel the sly smile behind his words. “How was it there? Haven’t been there in a long time, not even to fight or take a lover … isn’t that what they do there, Lady Raf? Fight and take lovers?”
His gruff laugh broke in suddenly and it startled Marian since she hadn’t expected it.
“You know your stuff, Illi, that’s for sure,” she said, trying to keep the sarcasm in her voice to a minimum. “I saw enough of that stuff there to make me sick. This is why I’m coming out to stay with you boys for a time. I’m ready to spill Felitian blood and rescue our comrades from the prison camp they have here. Right?”
The Ranalos grew quiet, and she didn’t know whether he was thinking about what to say to her, or if he was distracted and therefore ignoring her. “Come to the camp, Lady Raf. We have a tent set up for you. We heard about what you and your friend did on Veece recently, and it goes without saying that we consider you to be a mighty warrior, just like your husband.”
Marian blurted out a “thank you,” and it came out like a gasp, causing her to widen her eyes with surprise and embarrassment. “That means a lot to me,” she said after collecting herself. “My friend was able to get to Qeran Kyle, and now Tyhera is in an uproar. That will keep the Fels off of us as we take this camp, and afterwards I hope you all will join me in liberating Veece from the Felitians once and for all.” She started to move her bike slowly towards the camp.
“Tempting. That really is tempting, Lady Raf, but we want to rescue these rebels and head back to Lochte. As long as Palus Felitious is alive, I don’t want to be anywhere near Veece. We are brave, yes, but we are outnumbered a hundred to one. As you may not know—being that you have not been here for some time—no, if Palus Felitious falls, whether it be by your deadly friend or by yourself, I promise we will be there to help you take Veece. But until that happens, we will do this, and then return to our planet where we can fight to keep Palus Felitious off of it,” Illi said.
“I understand, warlord,” Marian said to him. “This will be me coming over the hill, so don’t shoot.”
She turned off the comm and then drifted into the camp where she parked her bike and stepped off. She felt a sudden pain in her inner thighs from riding for several hours. She walked around and stretched her back while the men looked on in admiration.
She was in her 3B suit, so there was not much of her spectacular shape that would be left to their imagination. A few inched forward to try their luck but she stared icy daggers into them and motioned to the knives that she had strapped to her legs.
These were Ranalos warriors, all wearing colorful dragon bone armor, and as a unit they stood glaring at her with war paint on their stoic faces and dye on the tentacles of their heads. Marian
waded amongst them to get to the large tent in the center. She noticed that as she pushed her way through, a few of the men were reaching back to grope her backside. These were gruff men that had been at war for long months, and they hadn’t seen a woman of her caliber in ages. But Marian was not interested, so she slapped hands away and pushed past them even more violently until she was standing in front of Illi.
He was the biggest man in the camp and wore all black, and he had enough weapons on his person to arm a militia. Unlike the oranges, greens and reds that were on the tentacles of his group of warriors, his tentacles were painted black, and they reminded her of rolled up plaits on the top of a human’s head. He had a wicked scar that stretched from his right eye down to the left side of his neck. His body—the parts that she could see—was riddled with old bullet wounds and Marian wondered how it was that he was still alive.
“I see you admiring my beautiful face,” the big man joked. “I can’t believe we’re in the presence of a delicate, Tyheran flower such as you. Careful that you don’t get plucked out here, soft born,” he teased and Marian looked around in disbelief.
She flexed one bicep to show off her strength, and then used her other hand to try and check for any fat on her arm. She squeezed her bicep and looked at him quizzically, as if he was out of his mind.
“Which part of me do you see as soft, Illi? Because I’m not really seeing it. I’ve been put through the fire on several levels of training to prepare me for any situation. Felitian fencing arts started it, then the military, oh and then there’s the actual firefighting as a Tyheran rebel. Then there was the Phaser Academy, which is the type of force that only about one percent of military personnel qualify for.
“Soft born, huh? Really Illi? If any of your horny, testosterone-crazed lunatics try to ‘pluck’ this flower, they will learn that my blade is quite precise, and you will lose more men than the Felitians could manage in any war that you would ride into.”
