by Tristan Vick
“It’s the Nyctan fleet,” Cassera said, her voice growing hard and angry.
“What do we do?” Jegra asked.
Cassera tapped the underside of her wrist and Jegra noticed a little, orange glowing dot just under her blue skin. “Emergency transport,” she said. “Bring us up.” But there was no response. Agitated, she mashed the dot with her thumb and growled, “This is Vice Admiral Cassera Danica of the Imperial fleet. Bring us up now. That’s an order.”
Unexpectedly, a beam of yellow light hit the ground, but it missed its mark and appeared several feet away. Jegra shot Cassera a puzzled look and then they both turned to see Emperor Dakroth materialize. He was badly injured and his uniform was charred from a disrupter blast. Blood trickled down from his mouth and he gripped his left arm which hung limply at his side.
“My Lord!” Cassera gasped, rushing up to him to offer support. To Jegra’s surprise, he accepted it.
“It was a surprise attack. They hit the Dreadnaught with everything they had. She’s dead in the water.”
They all looked up and watched as the Nyctan fleet continued bombarding the flag ship of the Dagon Empire with everything they had. Pieces of the ship broke off and re-entered the atmosphere of Thessalonica, burning up as they came. It looked like a thousand shooting stars, but in broad daylight. Soon enough there was a deafening boom and the Dreadnaught split in two, its severed halves sailing away from one another as a series of explosions went off.
“Come on,” Jegra said, ushering Cassera and the emperor back to her chambers, which provided better cover than just standing out in the open. “We’ll be safer inside.”
Once back in her chambers, she helped Cassera lay Dakroth down onto her bed.
“How could have I been so stupid?” he grumbled, chastising himself for his strategic mistake. “I should have never left the front line. The Nyctans knew that the Dreadnaught was without the protection of the royal fleet. They ambushed me above my own homeworld!”
“I should have been up there with you,” Cassera said.
“No,” Dakroth replied, raising a hand to stop her from taking the blame for his mistake. “You had your orders. Keeping my bride safe was your top priority. Keeping the fleet safe was mine. I’m the one who has failed, not you.”
Another boom shook the room and Jegra looked at them both with worried eyes. “Is this an invasion?”
“No,” Dakroth grunted, re-situating himself as Cassera took his dislocated arm and jammed it back into place. “Argh! Ahhh … that’s better,” he said with a relieved sigh, rotating his arm and reorienting it. Watching his hand, he made a fist and opened it again, then relayed their situation without ever diverting his gaze. “The Nyctans don’t have the manpower to carry out a full-fledged invasion. This is just a blitz attack to try and declaw the Dagon fleet’s main asset.”
“The Dreadnaught.”
“They’ll likely tuck tail and retreat like the cowards they are once the Imperial fleet jumps back to the system.”
“How long will that take?”
“Depending on their current positions, anywhere from five to ten hours,” Cassera replied.
“Then we’ll regroup and take the fight back to them.”
Jegra scratched her chin and murmured something to herself.
“What is it?” Dakroth asked, noticing she was busy unraveling something.
“It seems that’s what they want you to do. They attack here, then feign their escape once the fleet arrive. Seeking revenge, you chase after them, leaving the back door open…”
“It is an invasion!” Cassera gasped.
The emperor’s face grew deathly serious. “Remind me to kill Vice Admiral Akkatan when the fleet gets here,” he growled. “Not only has his intel been wrong this whole time, but the two-faced coward insisted we were winning the war.”
“I’ll kill him myself,” Cassera said, punching a fist into her palm and grinding it in as though she were mashing Admiral Akkatan’s bones.
“No. The message needs to come from me.”
Another large boom shook the arena, but it felt different somehow.
“That wasn’t debris from the ship,” Jegra said.
“It was a disrupter blast,” Cassera said, her voice growing apprehensive for the first time since Jegra had known her. Turning to the emperor, she said, “They must have traced the coordinates of your last transport.”
“Which means,” Dakroth said with a grunt as he rose to his feet. “We can’t stay here. They’ll be bombarding this place until nothing is left but a smoldering crater.”
“We can’t go out that way,” said Jegra, thumbing over her shoulder at her broken entrance. A blast shook the entire complex of the arena, shaking dust from the ceiling. Several slaves ran past her entrance, making a desperate escape to get out of the hypogeum before it came collapsing down on their heads, but she felt that maybe it was safer down here than up there.
Another blast shook the entire underground complex, and the slaves that had just run past a moment earlier came flying back in pieces.
Jegra cringed. “See?” she said, her point proved for her.
“Right,” Dakroth said, and he walked over to Jegra’s vanity table and mirror which she never used. Being a dirty, bloody, sweaty gladiator never gave her the opportunity to glam herself up. She’d always found the vanity a huge waste of space.
Emperor Dakroth shoved the table out of the way and then searched the rockface of the wall with his fingers. Finding what he was looking for, he pressed a seemingly arbitrary rock and an entire portion of the wall opened up, revealing a secret passageway.
“How Come I didn’t know about this?” Jegra asked, both hands on her hips as she stood by and watched in disbelief as a secret passage was revealed to her. An escape route had been right under her nose this whole time.
“Every emperor likes to have his fun,” Dakroth said with a wink. Then he tossed his white hair across his shoulders and marched into the dark mouth of the newly revealed exit. “Follow me,” his voice came floating back to them.
Cassera and Jegra shared a glance and Jegra smiled. “After you,” she said, gesturing for Cassera to go on ahead of her. Cassera went forward, but as she passed Jegra something swatted her ass. This caused Cassera to jump and tense up.
“You won’t be doing that the entire way, will you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jegra said, shifting her hips and placing a finger on her chin and she ogled Cassera’s butt. “It’s such a fine ass.”
Cassera let out an exasperated sigh and then followed after the emperor. Jegra looked back at what had become home to her for the past year and a half. It felt weird to be leaving it like this. But another rumble and more debris falling from the ceiling reminded her why she needed to go.
After what seemed the longest, darkest, trek of her life, she finally emerged in the brilliant light of the desert day. She shielded her eyes and gave them time to adjust to the unrestricted radiance of the surface.
When her eyes finally adjusted, she found Cassera tying her jacket around her waist. Sweat stains soaked through her light gray, military issue tank top and she pulled on her collar to let what little breeze there was lap at her chest, perchance to cool her.
Dakroth stood a ways off, staring up at the sky as he watched the Nyctan fleet lay waste to his ship.
Jegra turned and looked back at Arena City, as it was known to the inhabitants of the moon, and the colosseum, which was little more than burning rubble at this point. Occasionally, disrupter blasts of green energy came down from the sky and bombarded the flattened arena merely to add insult to injury.
The Nyctan battle cruisers had already done their worst, wiping out a city of roughly three thousand souls, but Jegra knew their continued barrage was just a reminder for Emperor Dakroth that they were still here and that there was nothing he could do about it.
Jegra didn’t hear or see any signs of survivors in the town, which meant the Nyctans had probably vapori
zed everyone above ground.
If there were survivors, she hoped they were dug in tightly. Most likely, they were trapped beneath the surface, just as she would have been, had it not been for the secret passageway out that only the emperor knew about. Knowing there was nothing she could do for the lost citizens, however, she turned and faced her two blue-skinned Dagon guardians. Her fate was in their hands now.
“Where to now?” Jegra asked, glancing at Dakroth and then Cassera.
“There’s a small oasis about twelve klicks from here. A trading hub for the black market,” Emperor Dakroth replied.
“Mardok,” Jegra said, less than enthused.
“You’ve heard of it?” he asked.
“I couldn’t forget it even if I wanted to,” Jegra lamented. “The slaver who purchased me and sold me into the arena is from Mardok.”
Jegra found herself unable to hold back the flood of emotions. Mardok was the first place, other than Earth, she’d ever set foot and it was the was last place she expected to see again anytime soon. She took a deep breath and composed herself.
“What’s in Mardok that’s so important?”
“I’ve an old acquaintance there who can hook us up with passage off this desolate rock,” Dakroth said waving his hand across the panoramic scenery of Thessalonica’s endless array of sand dunes.
Jegra liked how they always reflected bright orange at this time of day, just before the twin suns of Dagon began to set.
“And go where, exactly?” Jegra asked. “The Nyctan fleet is currently blockading anything from entering or leaving the Dagon homeworld and Thessalonica has nothing of worth on it–except for the arena which now lays in ruin.”
“We won’t be going to the Dagon homeworld, my dear,” the emperor informed her with a sly grin. “We’ll be headed to the Zargora system.”
“Your majesty,” Cassera interrupted, glancing at Jegra and then to the emperor. “This is classified information.”
“It’s fine, Cassera,” he said, waving his hand as though he were brushing aside her concerns. “It’s on a need-to-know basis and, right now, she needs to know.”
Jegra looked at the vice admiral with a puzzled expression on her face. She’d heard that the Zargora system was unclaimed space. Much of it was uncharted, which made for the perfect environment for smugglers and space pirates who wanted to avoid confrontation with the Nyctans and Dagons. But she had never heard of anything of value to the empire there, which is why it had been largely ignored. “What’s in the Zargora system?”
“You mean other than marauders and space pirates and the scum and villainy of seven star systems?”
“Of course,” Jegra jested, “Other than that, obviously.”
“The asteroid MK-29-388-XP3 is there.”
Jegra shot Emperor Dakroth a puzzled look.
“It’s a secret military base,” he informed her, settling any further confusion. “The new flagship of the fleet is being built there. A type-three Nova class destroyer.”
“Then, allow me to act as your personal bodyguard for this mission. And I swear to you, I will get you to your ship.”
“Splendid!” Dakroth chirped. Then, pulling out a tracker from his jacket, he followed a little blip on his screen. Turning up the sandy hill, he began heading in the direction of Mardok. “Now that we’re all up to speed, let’s get a move on.”
“Are you alright?” Cassera asked, noticing Jegra’s forlorn expression.
It was the first time Cassera had showed anything in the way of genuine sympathy toward her, and she smiled. “You know something?” Cassera’s eyes widened in anticipation of Jegra’s reply. “I think I’m going to be just fine.”
Cassera smiled and turned to follow after the emperor when she felt a smack across her buttocks. Sighing out, she asked in a less than tolerant tone of voice, “Must you?”
Jegra marched past her with zest in her step but deliberately ignored Cassera’s lamentation and continued onward.
Amused by Jegra’s undying persistence to try to get a rise out of her, she laughed to herself. In the short few days she’d spent with the Earth woman, she’d felt a strong connection form between them. It was a shame that, after all was said and done, she’d have to be the one to kill her.
8
A scorching sun beat down on Jegra’s bronzed skin as she squatted at the foot of the dune, one of the many they’d traversed over the past three hours. Unable to hold it in any longer, she pulled down her bikini bottoms and released the flood gates.
Jegra let out a deep sigh of relief as a gleaming puddle formed beneath her, and Emperor Dakroth, who stood at the top of the dune, watched with an amused grin while Vice Admiral Cassera Danica made a sour face and looked away.
“Must you always act so primitively?” Cassera carped, repulsed by Jegra’s lewd and uncensored behavior.
She breathed out a deep sigh of relief as she finished her business and replied, “When you gotta go, you gotta go. And, besides, I’ve been holding it in since the tea you gave me. So, in a way, this is all your fault.”
Cassera smacked her teeth in displeasure and folded her arms across her chest, turning her body away to better show her deep-felt disgust.
“Do Earth women always leave their scent wherever they please?” Dakroth asked.
“No,” Jegra replied. “Most would never allow you to be in their presence when they did so. But there aren’t a lot of facilities nearby, are there?”
“Fascinating,” he said, watching her pull up her undergarments and kick sand onto the damp area she’d made.
Much rejuvenated, Jegra stretched her arms over her head, bending her elbows near her head, and cracked her neck. Sweat streamed down her face, neck, and chest, and she was on the verge of dehydration. “How much further till Mardok?” she inquired.
Dakroth pulled out his scanner and scanned the horizon in a north-westerly direction. “About two klicks,” he replied.
Jegra estimated that a klick was about a kilometer, just shy of a mile. So that meant they could probably make it there in the next half hour. She wiped some sweat off her chest and let out another long sigh.
Another hour of walking across the scorching deadlands of Thessalonica was not her idea of a leisurely outing, but it sure beat getting pulverized by the Nyctan disrupter canons, which continued to bombard Arena City from space.
With a bit of trouble, Jegra hiked up the shifting sands. When she neared the cusp of the dune, she saw a blue hand extend toward her and looked up to find Cassera offering assistance.
Pleased by the unexpected gesture of kindness, Jegra took Cassera’s hand and let her hoist her up to the top of the dune. Jegra hopped up beside Cassera and made sure to press her sweaty chest into her.
“Thanks,” she said in a parched voice, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath.
“You would have done the same for me,” Cassera replied.
“Yes, I would have,” Jegra said with a smile. Jegra leaned close and whispered in Cassera’s ear. “I guess I’m beginning to rub off on you. Be careful, Cassera, you may just be in danger of becoming more human.”
Cassera recoiled and shot Jegra a perturbed look. “There’s no reason to be insulting,” she scoffed.
“What?” Jegra said, throwing up her hands and feigning ignorance. “It was a compliment.”
“Being compared to your kind is degrading. Dagons are the supreme species in the galaxy. Saying that I’m becoming more human is like saying you are becoming more like the primitive reptiles of your world.”
“Reptiles are fierce predators on my homeworld,” Jegra informed Cassera. “It wouldn’t be much of an insult.”
“I meant to say it implied you are simple minded.”
“Is that really how you see me?” Jegra asked, although she was simply pushing Cassera’s buttons for the fun of it. Even so, discovering how Cassera truly viewed her hurt her feelings. If she really thought Jegra was nothing but a dumb, bumbling oaf, then why had she t
aken any interest in her to begin with?
“Ladies, please. Enough chin wagging. We must get to Mardok before nightfall. Once the sun goes down, the sand worms hunt using their infrared heat vision. You don’t want to be caught on the open dunes without protection come nightfall.”
Cassera began following after the emperor, but when the customary swat on the buttocks didn’t come, she looked back to find Jegra gazing off at the blue sky with a sad look on her face. She then regretted being so harsh about the matter.
Little did Jegra know, however, that Cassera wasn’t just upset by the awful notion of a Dagon being compared to a human, she was actually more concerned with the fact that Jegra’s DNA was somehow rewriting the DNA of anyone who engaged in sexual intercourse with her. This included both her and the emperor.
Once Cassera had confirmed the emperor’s worst suspicions, however, he’d rushed back to Thessalonica to investigate personally and had begun to lay the ground work for making Jegra the legend she was to become.
At the same time, the emperor had assigned Cassera the task to study how far the effects went. So, it was up to her to continue her intimate relations with Jegra until her DNA was so scrambled she could no longer be considered a pure-blood.
Once her DNA was rendered human, she was to research a cure that would reverse the damage. Then, with any luck, they would find a way to weaponize the effect.
It was the emperor’s idea to use the DNA rewriting sequence on all non-Dagon species and render them more like the inferior humans. That way they’d be easier to subjugate.
In the meantime, Emperor Dakroth would build up Jegra as a legend. A human slave who rose up from the arena to win his heart and become his empress–ruling alongside him as Imperatrix of the Dagon Empire.
The truth was much more insidious, however. Jegra was simply a means to an end. By making an inferior creature such as her his empress, it would give all species hope that they, too, could aspire to such greatness. It would give them a myth to believe in.
