Marduk's Rebellion

by Jenn Lyons

pulling his hands just out of alignment, then lifted my legs, wrapped them around his neck, and rolled down to the ground, using momentum to get us both over to where live wires lay strewn across disconnected equipment shelves. His realized the danger and made one last attempt to make my mind bleed, but he wasn’t strong enough.

  I jammed a stripped electrical wire into his back. The energy arced through us both. It was unpleasant to me, more than unpleasant to him, and I watched his eyes turn white with pain as he tried to deal with the current. I had just enough time to extricate myself and then I slammed my foot hard against his sternum.

  [Sleep.]

  He did.

  I removed the wiring from his unconscious body and tossed it to the side, falling to my knees as I tried to recover my breath.

  “That was incredible,” the woman said. “I’ve never seen anyone fight like that. I didn’t think there was anyone who could defeat a High Guard.”

  “There’s a trick to it,” I said. “Who are you?”

  She bit her lip. “My name’s Julia.”

  I stared at her. Julia was an attractive woman with black skin and green eyes. Her dark hair was braided in tiny rows. The black skin did a fine job of almost hiding the tattoo marks that indicated her striketeam allegiance. Almost.

  “Give me a second,” I told her, and I walked over to the control consoles.

  “You’re the one Kaj-Shae Threllis is involved with,” I said.

  She looked surprised, shocked. “How do you know—?”

  “I know. Just take it on faith that I know.” I nodded towards the computer equipment. “I’m going to shut down some systems. If you try to stop me, you’re going to end up taking a nap just like your High Guard friend here.”

  “Why can’t you leave us alone? Threllis and I just want to escape, leave here and live our own lives...”

  I sighed as I looked over the consoles. “Is that what he’s told you?”

  “I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but Threllis and I love each other.”

  “You’re right. I find that hard to believe.”

  She tilted her head. “Why? Sarcodinay are capable of emotion.”

  “I know that, but he’s not just a Sarcodinay. He’s a Sarcodinay who’s responsible for killing millions of people. You love him?”

  “I never said it made sense. We were going to leave. Escape to one of the pirate worlds and live our lives together.”

  I shook my head. “There isn’t a pirate world out there that would take him, Julia. I sympathize with the desire, but he’s one of the most hated beings in the entire League.”

  She wrung her hands in the fabric of her khani. “So you’re here to kill him.”

  “No,” I corrected. “I’m here to save him. From himself as well as others. Are you aware he’s activated the colony self-destruct?”

  “He just did that to scare off the people trying to kill him.” She sounded defensive.

  “And why aren’t you with him?”

  “I was supposed to join him once he’d finished prepping the ship. Then some Sol Navy ships started blocking his way. I was keeping an eye on him,” she pointed to the High Guard.

  I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Julia, if he had any intention of taking you with him, he would have had you on the ship with him. He was leaving you behind.”

  “You don’t know that! How dare you!”

  I looked at her. She was a pretty girl. She could almost pass as Sarcodinay, if a bit short and small to really make the cut. Still, close enough to shortcut some of the taboos and aesthetics of a culture very different from one’s own.

  “I do know,” I said. “Because you know. I can see the doubt in your eyes. It’s oozing off you. You know he was leaving without you. He’s told you he loves you, but he doesn’t love you enough to die for you, although he’s perfectly willing to let you die for him, to be the decoy for his enemies...” I paused.

  Wasn’t that exactly what Zaladin had just done with me?

  As I turned towards the door, it slammed open, and Zaladin came through dragging the body of Kaj-Shae Threllis behind him. The Sarcodinay warden was not dead: I could still feel his mind through a thick fog of sleep and gray pain.

  Julia screamed and ran towards her lover. I interposed myself, not certain that Zaladin wouldn’t casually do her injury if she tried something rash. “Zaladin, what are you doing here?” I asked him. “I thought we agreed I’d disable the computer security and then we’d both turn off the self-destruct together.”

  “Already done,” Zaladin said as he dumped Kaj-Shae Threllis’ body on the floor. “Right now I need you to kill Threllis.”

  I stared at him. “I’m sorry. Was that a joke?”

  “You know he has to die.”

  “I don’t know anything—” I paused as Julia made a move to run past me. I sighed and intercepted the woman with a shock stick, and then lowered her body to the ground. Still squatting, I looked up at Zaladin. “No one needs to die. That’s the sort of garbage men tell each other to justify horrors. It’s bullshit and you know it.”

  The Sarcodinay shook his head. “I promised I wouldn’t kill him.”

  “So that means I have to?” I stared at him in disbelief. “Were you listening at all? I won’t kill him!”

  “He tortured your parents!”

  “Let him live with that knowledge and those memories. I’m not pouring blood on my hands to give his crimes some kind of horrifying legitimacy. Why does he need to die? You tell me that, and don’t you dare mention my parents again!”

  “I wasn’t the one who signed his death warrant,” Zaladin said. “Tirris Vahn did that a very long time ago. She just never bothered to send out the warrants until last week.”

  “What are you saying? You’re doing this on orders?”

  He smiled. “I’ve always been very good at following orders.”

  “And I’ve always been very bad at it.” I glanced down at Kaj-Shae Threllis. He was unconscious, but barely, and his thoughts weren’t buried so deep that I couldn’t reach them. Difficult and tricky, but his own telepathic defenses were scant protection in his present condition. I looked back up at Zaladin and kept talking while I reached out towards Kaj-Shae Threllis with my mind. “I agreed to help you as long as Kaj-Shae Threllis lived,” I reminded him.

  He presented me a hand-maser. “You agreed to help as long as I didn’t kill him. That’s not the same.”

  “Really, Zaladin? Semantics?”

  “Call it what you like, but the truth is, he has to die. Has to for the good of the Empire.”

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to conceal where my real concentration was focused. Kaj-Shae Threllis’ thoughts were a maze-like blur of feelings, regrets, longings and snapshot-like images of people, places and things. It wasn’t easy to make sense of it.

  “Good of the Empire?” I paused. “Keepers, Zach. You still think you’re a High Guard, don’t you? You still think you’re serving the greater good of the Sarcodinay. What right has Kathosis or this new one Kathanial to earn your loyalty? What right do they have to bend you to commit these crimes?”

  “Take the gun, Lory.”

  I did so, but kept talking. “I’ll stop you. You know I will, and I don’t think you can afford for me to keep hunting you like this.” I almost had something, a fragment of a thought from Threllis’ mind, an image of the new Emperor...

  Zaladin looked down at the Sarcodinay, over at me, and I saw his expression set with rigid disapproval. “I’m sorry, Mallory. Really, I am.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “Kill him.”

  “What—?”

  I pulled the trigger.

  Time seemed to slow down as I saw the shot hit Kaj-Shae Threllis, not seeing the beam at all without my lenses but seeing the effect. A maser shot to the head is not a pretty death. There isn’t a lot of blood, but the skin crisps and melts and the eyes boil in their sockets. And I knew. I knew. I could feel the moment where brain, heart
, body, and will all dissolved into the black, the heartbeat tremors of life itself turning to nothingness and dissolution.

  I’d killed him.

  The shock of that realization, all the more shocking because it hadn’t been my will that had pulled the trigger any more than it had been my will that had made me take the gun from Zaladin in the first place, hit home just as the memories did. I tried not to lose myself in them, knowing how vulnerable it made me, but I had no chance, and as the thoughts swept up to overwhelm I felt the pain of Zaladin’s fist against my jaw and knew merciful blackness.

  ggg

  I rub my temple and then look up at Gala-Mal Norus. “And why is this a problem?”

  The scientist pales a little and his eyes turn yellow-orange from embarrassment and frustration. “It’s not, Kaj. Not exactly. I just wanted you to realize that these human reactors have very poor redundant safety systems. Once we see infrastructure collapse, we’re likely going to see meltdowns.”

  I wave a hand. “I’ll inform his majesty, but I doubt Kathosis will much care. At most we’ll lose a few million or so.”

  He nods and bows to me. “Of course, Kaj. When are we scheduled for release?”

  I give him a hard look. “Really, Gala-Mal. You don’t need to know that.”

  ggg

  When I woke, I was tied up and sitting in one of the chairs in the control room. The other girl, Julia, was also tied up in a chair, but still unconscious.

  The High Guard was dead, killed while he slept. I could tell just by looking.

  I never had learned his name.

  I knew Zaladin was still in the room. I could feel him even if I wasn’t in a good position to see him.