by Tristan Vick
Jegra lunged at one of the Nyctan guards and rammed him with her shoulder. As he flew back into a fellow soldier, she stripped him of his blaster. Spinning around, she began firing at the dozen or so remaining Nyctan soldiers.
Obviously, they wanted her alive, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered coming all the way down to the surface of Cordova to collect her themselves. Not when a disrupter from space could have eliminated her and the emperor all the more easily.
Cassera whipped out her personal blaster and began to lay down cover fire for Jegra.
“What are you doing, Vice Admiral?” Dakroth roared in anger. “You’ll ruin everything!”
“I won’t let them take her,” Cassera said, firing at will.
Before she could do too much damage, however, a laser blast struck her in the abdomen and Cassera collapsed to the ground. Clutching her gut, she screamed out, “Run, Jegra! Run!”
Emperor Dakroth raised a hot glowing finger, still smoking from the blast he’d dealt Cassera, and carefully trained it on Jegra.
As soon as Cassera fell out of the way, Jegra reached out and grabbed a Nyctan soldier by his arm, then spun him around and tossed him like a ragdoll into a line of fellow soldiers. Four men collapsed at once, giving Jegra the window of opportunity she needed to escape.
But just as she turned to run, a laser grazed the side of her arm. She yelped out and grabbed her singed flesh, shooting a menacing glare back at Dakroth, who aimed his glowing finger at her.
Just then, the Knight stepped in front of Dakroth, preventing him from firing another shot. Whether it was deliberate or not, she didn’t know. But she didn’t wait around to find out. Taking advantage of the opening, Jegra sprinted off toward the bigger rock formations in the distance.
As she went, she reached behind her back and blasted holes into three other soldiers. Their bodies dropped to the ground, armor smoldering as wisps of smoke rose from their blast wounds.
In truth, she was trying to hit Dakroth, but due to the fact that she’d never actually wielded a high-powered blaster before, her aim was sadly lacking. All she did was simply keep her finger on the trigger until the blaster’s battery packs ran out. Still, she managed to hit enough targets to give herself a good head start to make a break for it.
The blaster coils overheated and the battery spent, Jegra tossed the weapon aside and sprinted as fast as she could. Having gained super strength gave her the ability to run quite well, although she’d never really opened up, having always been confined to the arena.
A cloud of dust shot up behind her as she raced faster and faster. She estimated she was running upwards of 80 kilometers per hour, but she was beginning to overheat and needed to stop. Skidding to a halt, a blast of sand shot by her from her own dust trail. She pressed her hands to her knees and panted, taking in as much air as she could.
She was certain that as long as she kept moving, their scans would have trouble pinpointing her exact location, so there was no way they could beam her away.
Although the Knight was, in all likelihood, already in pursuit, she had put enough distance between them to buy her some time. She tapped the cuff of her smart-suit and spoke into the bottom of her wrist. “Camo.”
Swirls of colors danced about her suit and then settled on a series of red and tan topographical striations that matched the multicolored layers of the surrounding sandstone.
Jegra slowly turned to face the way she had come. She wanted to go back for Cassera. But with a Knight standing between her and saving Cassera, she knew it wasn’t possible. She’d have to find another way to deal with this new threat. Once she found a way out of this mess, then she could go and rescue Cassera.
Back at the clearing, the Knight spun around and shot Dakroth a menacing look.
“This wasn’t part of the deal,” the Knight said, glaring at Dakroth as Jegra’s dust trail faded into the foothills.
“I warned you she was a handful.”
The Knight growled like an angered beast and then slowly turned. The hulking Knight, determined to catch his prey, headed off toward the rock formations and began his hunt.
“You cowardly bastard,” Cassera growled, furious at Dakroth for his betrayal.
She had only known about his plan to hand Jegra over to the Nyctans since the space walk. That’s why she had been so upset that day. She had adamantly disagreed with his strategy and questioned him on it. He reassured her it was necessary to test his theory, see if she could manipulate Nyctan DNA in the same way she had theirs.
If so, then Dakroth felt that weaponizing Jegra’s biology would become the greatest weapon the Dagon Empire had ever yielded. Yet, at the same time, he had betrayed her in a way that was unworthy of a person of her stature.
After all, they had been through the ringer together. Although it had been only a week, they’d been together constantly, and under pressure. It was becoming harder and harder to pretend that she hadn’t fallen madly in love with Jegra. Cassera couldn’t bear to see her darling Earthling be abused in such a heinous and ungrateful manner. Although the emperor was infamously ruthless, this was crossing a line as far as she was concerned.
But as usual, Dakroth ignored her advice. He always ignored her advice. In fact, the only reason she felt he had kept her around for so long was that, before Jegra had arrived on the scene, cheating on his wife, Jennica, with her gave him a rise.
Those days were behind them now, though. And now Cassera had betrayed the emperor by being more loyal to Jegra, which was as good as a death sentence and explained why he hadn’t hesitated to shoot her just now.
The blast wound in her side shot a sharp throbbing pain throughout her whole body and she clamped her hands down over the wound and let out an agonizing groan.
Dakroth sauntered up to her, wearing a roguish grin on his face. Coming up alongside her, he knelt down and brushed her white bangs away from her face and gently tucked them behind her ear.
“I brokered a ceasefire with the Nyctans,” he explained to her. “All I needed to do was hand over Jegra. In return, they agreed to all my terms and conditions. Besides, Vice Admiral, as I recall, I specifically told you not to get attached.”
“Your lordship, if I may,” Ha’ppek interjected, trying to offer a fresh perspective on things. “Jegra is, after all, the rightful Empress of the Dagon Empire now. Wouldn’t it better serve the Empire to continue to safeguard her from the Nyctans?”
“You see, Ha’ppek,” the emperor began, fetching Cassera’s blaster up off the ground. “There are only three people here who know that Jegra is officially the Empress.” Rising back up, he aimed the blaster at Ha’ppek.
“Your majesty?” he asked, confounded.
Without any qualms, Dakroth pulled the trigger. The squeal of the disrupter blast rang out and Ha’ppek looked down at the smoldering hole in his stomach. Then, he let out a gasp of air, smoke coming from his mouth. Tottering briefly, his legs gave out from under him and the weight of his dead body crashed to the ground in a heap of holy robes and blue skin. Ha’ppek’s red eyes were as wide as a Nogrossian deer as he gazed up at the blue sky, his face frozen in a state of bewildered shock, a few wisps of white smoke still curling out of his gaping mouth.
Emperor Dakroth trained his laser pistol onto Cassera and pondered, “What to do with you, my dear vice admiral?”
“Wait,” she said, holding up her hand.
“Are you begging for my mercy? My, oh my. How the mighty have fallen.” A disgusted look came over his face and he sneered, “Disgraceful.”
“Not a disgrace, my lord. I have sequenced Jegra’s DNA and know everything there is to know about her. I know the truth of what she really is. But if you kill me, you’ll have to wait until you can get back to Dagon Prime to begin your experiments all over again. Even then, who could you trust with this monumental secret? It seems to me, you have no choice but to spare me. For the time being. But, as always, it’s your choice, my lord.”
Dakroth glared at Cassera, r
esenting her cunning. Relinquishing his anger, he lowered the gun as a cruel smile curled onto his lips. “Well played, Vice Admiral. Well played, indeed.”
19
Sparkling beads of sweat glistened upon Jegra’s chest like a jewel encrusted necklace as she lingered under the blistering Cordova sun.
It was almost as hot out here as on Thessalonica. Almost. Unzipping her smart-suit down to her belly button, which was as far down as it would go without her spilling out, she leaned up against a pillar of orange striped sandstone and fanned herself. It did little to help cool her, let alone prevent the beads of perspiration from slipping in between her breasts as they trickled down her body.
The infernal Knight had been playing a game of cat and mouse with her for the past hour and a half and she was getting really fed up with it. Cassera was correct. Once a Knight begins pursuing you, they don’t ever give up.
She knew that eventually she’d have to face the thing, but she wondered what she could do to get the edge up on a fully armored power suit. Getting the bright idea that her suit might be able to do more than just camouflage, she held her wrist up and spoke into the cuff. “Color change. Clear.”
Her suit went transparent and she looked down to see her naked body fully on display. “Shit,” she said, bringing the cufflink control unit to her mouth. “I meant, invisible.”
The suit flickered, turned black, then white, then clear again. Again, she looked down to see her naked body. “No, no, no,” she said, letting out an agitated sigh. “Cancel.”
The suit turned back to its colorful pattern of orange and tan swirls which mimicked the landscape. She let out a sigh of relief when she was no longer in the nude.
That’s when it dawned on her. She still had the hologram bracelet on that Gyllek had given her. Twisting it, she spoked into the device and said, “Match terrain.” Immediately she turned into part of the pillar of sand.
Naturally, it was just a hologram, but one which also happened to scramble scanners. She learned this rather quickly, because no sooner had she disappeared from sight than the Knight stepped into view.
She stood frozen as the Knight scanned the entire area. Not picking up her vitals, he clunked off toward the north end of the rock formations. Once he was out of sight, Jegra twisted the bracelet and reappeared.
“She wasn’t kidding,” Jegra said to herself. “This thing will come in handy.”
With the tables turned, she decided to stalk the Knight for a while. See if there was anything she could learn about it. Her last encounter with a Knight was intense, to say the least.
Jegra sat perched on top of a tall pillar about twenty feet up and just watched the Knight roam about as he continued searching for her in vain. She waited at least another hour and was slowly going out of her mind due to the heat and the monotony of the landscape. Forty-five additional minutes crept by and, oddly enough, the Knight stopped searching and just stood there. Waiting.
He waited a good, long thirty minutes and then another thirty more. By now, the sun was beginning to go down and a sunset was forming on the horizon. Another half-hour passed and the sky began to turn purple as the orange sunset had compressed into a narrow pink band that stretched across the horizon.
Jegra was growing weary and her butt was sore from sitting on a rock for hours on end. She wanted to eat and take a shower. Also, she had to pee like a son of a bitch but knew that the moment she moved from her spot she’d give away her position.
Jegra covered her mouth and yawned. The slight noise of her yawning caused the Knight to look in her general direction. This, of course, made her nervous and she grew deathly silent as the Knight stared at her.
When it finally looked away again she carefully let out the breath she’d been holding the whole time and tried breathing through her nose so as to minimize the amount of sound. That was a close one, she thought.
That’s when she heard the hum of a plasma blade igniting. Jegra scooted to the edge of her perch and looked down at the Knight who reached back with his flaming hot sword and then lobbed it like a boomerang. The sword spun through the air like a flaming helicopter blade, its plasma humming dangerously with each rotation, until finally it collided with the base of the pillar of rock that she sat on.
The pillar of stone toppled down like a domino and Jegra shouted, “Shit!”
She leapt off before it all came down around her and she hit the ground a few meters off. And she hit hard. So hard that it caused her holographic disguise to falter.
The hologram flickered as she tumbled to a stop. Unable to get the image to stabilize, she smacked the bracelet hoping to jar it back into work order, but instead it completely cut out.
The hologram that had mimicked the surrounding terrain disappeared and she was standing in the open. Vulnerable.
“Well, I can’t say it was fun,” she sighed, looking up at the Knight who marched toward her with a dogged relentlessness.
As was her ritual before a fight, she cracked her neck across her shoulders and then rotated her arms in large swooping circles out to her sides. Grabbing her elbows, she stretched her arms over her head, bending first to the left and then to the right. As the Knight was almost upon her, she hopped up and down a couple times to get the blood to her legs flowing.
“But it’s about to get real fun,” she added at the last moment just as the Knight came within grappling distance.
The Knight lunged at her and she dodged. It moved faster than a regular combatant.
They circled one another and held each other’s gaze. Jegra had experience fighting on the sands, and tucked and rolled toward the Knight. She came up with a handful of sand and tossed it in his face.
The Knight was blinded by the cloud of sand, and Jegra punched him in his chest as hard as she could. The Knight flew into the air and crashed down onto a rock formation about half the size of the one she’d been sitting on. It broke in half as the hulking armored Knight impacted with it and it all came toppling down. An avalanche of rubble buried the Knight, but, unfazed by her punch, he pushed himself up. Debris poured off his armor like sand slipping out of an hourglass. Rising back up, he turned to her, his visor flashing red.
“What are you? A bloody robot?” she asked.
The question was rhetorical, however. She found a huge rock and chucked it at the Knight.
He batted it away from himself, and the boulder split in two, both halves rolling away from him like runaway tumbleweeds. Not that it was difficult to break sandstone, but the way he casually kept moving forward didn’t fill her with very much optimism.
Not giving him a chance to get on the offensive, she dashed toward the Knight and leapt up into the air and kneed it in the chest. It staggered back, but caught himself and quickly regained his composure.
Grunting, she did a round house kick and hit the same spot on the Knight’s chest. She was bound and determined to crack this thing open like a walnut.
The Knight staggered back but, again, caught its footing. Jegra leapt up and came down on him with her elbow. His head rocked back with a clang but it righted itself almost instantly.
Jegra rubbed her elbow and hopped up and down. “Ow,” she complained. “That fucking hurt.”
The Knight looked down at the ground and Jegra followed its gaze. Laying in the dirt just at its feet was the plasma sword. She surmised that it must have an automatic turn-off, since it wasn’t melting through the planet at the moment. Bending down, the Knight retrieved the sword and ignited it.
“A girl just can’t catch a break,” Jegra groaned. She wiped the sweat from her brow, flicked it off her fingers, and then balled her firsts up and raised them as she prepared for round two of their little tango.
She widened her stance, placing once foot slightly behind her body, keeping her center of gravity squarely over her feet, and took a defensive posture.
“Surrender,” the Knight said in a booming voice.
She waited for him to say something else. Something like, s
urrender and you won’t be harmed. Or, surrender and I’ll make your death painless. Instead, all she got was surrender.
“Funny,” she quipped. “I was about to tell you the same thing.”
The Knight swung the plasma blade and Jegra bent over backwards as the blade scorched over her. When she sprang back up, she realized her suit was on fire.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she said, falling to the ground and rolling in the dirt. She made sure to roll away from the Knight.
When she clamored back to her feet, a thin film of mud dappled her sweaty flesh. The Knight was already advancing on her.
He took another wide swing and Jegra jumped out of the way. She hit the ground and rolled; this time ensuring she smothered any fires before they could do any damage.
Even with all her ducking and dodging, she still noticed a large slice had been taken out across her back. Her skin was fine, but her suit, made mainly from rubber mesh of fiberoptic textile, was dissolving fast. Apparently, smart-suits weren’t intended for intense heat.
Each slash of the Knight’s blade melted more and more of her suit away until all that was left was a series of pleather strands that stretched tight across her curvaceous body, it could barely conceal all of her. She feared any further attacks would render her completely naked.
“Okay, this is starting to get ridiculous. Are you trying to see me naked or what? Because I could save you the trouble and just take it all off, if you’d like.”
The Knight stopped dead in his tracks and flicked off the sword. “Apologies,” he said. “It was not my intention to sin.”
Jegra raised an eyebrow. These Knights were pretty strange adversaries, she thought. Not my intention to sin?’ What in the blazes was he yammering on about?
“If I surrender to you, what then?”
“I am to bring you before the Administratrix, Anaïs Nin, where you will be judged accordingly.”
“Judged?” Jegra asked, confused.
“Judged for your sins.”
“Ah, I see. And as fun as that sounds, how about no.” Jegra took advantage of the fact that the Knight had turned off his blade and lunged forward. Throwing out her right leg she landed a solid kick right onto his chest. This time he did go down and lost hold of his sword in the process.
