Marduk's Rebellion

by Jenn Lyons

Zaladin’s senses I was using to keep him from seeing his targets dropped like a shuttle hit by an EMP burst.

  Kathanial looked over at us.

  [Zaladin? Zaladin what are you doing!?] I felt the voice inside my mind the same as Zaladin did, and we both looked over. [You must stop it. Stop it this instant. Don’t you realize who she is?]

  I don’t know what Zaladin would have said, how he would have explained himself. To anyone else, it would have looked like two humans in the crowd, both part of Lisa Keiler’s faction, had taken the moment to settle a grudge, no words exchanged because the feud was so old and well known. Szabo’s soldiers and security were making their way over to us, but because of the staring match between the Sarcodinay Emperor and Tirris Vahn, they were trying to handle it quietly.

  Kathanial knew exactly what was going on.

  [Your Majesty, no, leave this to—]

  Tirris Vahn didn’t waste the opportunity. She hit the Emperor with everything she had, a wave of malice splashing out from the force of its attack. Kathanial went to his knees, gold blood dripping from his eyes like angelic tears.

  “No!” I screamed.

  Gala-Mal Norus pulled a pen off one of the tables pushed over to the side and drove it into the Emperor’s back.

  Time slowed to a crawl. A dozen High Guards were there to prevent trouble, but not one of them was prepared enough to deal with heresy to anticipate what Gala-Mal Norus would do under Tirris Vahn’s control. I smelled blood as the pen drove through Kathanial’s armor and pierced skin. I didn’t think it would kill him, but it was pain, so painful, and pain was a distraction Kathanial could ill afford, as Tirris Vahn had demonstrated. I watched the Emperor’s eyes start to close.

  Zaladin and I forgot about each other. I ran to the Emperor.

  He ran to Tirris Vahn.

  “This ends, traitor,” he said aloud as he crossed over to her.

  She laughed. “Really? You think you can just point a finger and stop me? Poor Zaladin. I’ve won.”

  Zaladin smiled and lashed out at her telepathically.

  “Don’t die,” I whispered to Kathanial. “Please, you can’t die.” I didn’t know how bad the damage inflicted by Tirris Vahn had been, but I was guessing it was a major brain hemorrhage. Even if he survived it, what condition would he be in?

  Tirris Vahn blocked Zaladin’s telepathic assault with seeming ease, smiling as she did. [Should I kill you first, Zaladin? Or should I kill your bitch princess? Her scream provided me with the distraction I needed, so maybe I should leave her for last as thank you.]

  Zaladin ground his teeth, and redoubled his assault. I looked down at Kathanial and felt a burning, deep anger. I had just found him, and I was never going to know him, never going to know if he was worth knowing, if he was truly so different from other Sarcodinay.

  I joined my mind with Zaladin’s and renewed the attack.

  “He’s interfering,” Tirris said aloud. “You have to kill him. You have to kill them both.”

  I realized those instructions were to the witnessing High Guard.

  They hesitated. I even understood why. Many of them recognized Zaladin, knew he was High Guard, and even with him wanted for the assassination of the Emperor, his accusation to Tirris was something that made them pause. “Do it,” Zaladin said. “Do what you have to do.”

  “No, Zaladin, stop—”

  Tirris pulled something gold and gleaming from her sleeve and pointed it at Zaladin. I was so used to masers and the like I didn’t realize what I was looking at—a gun. A regular old human-style gun, if jeweled and prettied up into something almost unrecognizable.

  The shot hit Zaladin in the chest.

  He sank down to his knees, smiling.

  I lowered Kathanial’s head to the floor and started to stand. Zaladin—

  “And now, Tirris, by winning—you lose.” His voice was filled with pain and oddly, triumph.

  She cocked her head. “What insanity—?”

  I bent down over Zaladin.

  His eyes were an illusion, and I longed, in that moment, to see them for what they really were. I could feel his mind, so clearly, the contact still razor strong. “Don’t die,” I whispered.

  “I’ve done my duty—” Gold blood flecked his lips.

  “No. No, you can’t—” I held onto his mind, held on with everything in me. “I won’t let you go.”

  “About FirstCity,” Zaladin whispered. “Your way...was better...”

  He exhaled and died.

  That’s when the visions hit every Sarcodinay in the room.

  ggg

  “Do you know who I am?” I ask the young man.

  I can admit, at least to myself, that it’s a little unsettling to be around Zaladin. He’s perfection in miniature, like the most lovely of dolls or a child that has inexplicable grown to adulthood without adding any height. But he is High Guard, and I can’t really deny that he’s earned his place.

  “You’re Kaj-Sarco Tirris,” he answers, and then says, “You’re the one who had me transferred from the pits.”

  “Yes,” I say, smiling. “And one day, I will have Name of Distinction. One day I will be Empress of the Sarcodinay. And you—” I circled around him. “You will help me gain all these things. First, you will help me learn more about an alien race we’ve discovered. They’re called ‘humans’.”

  He tilts his head. “Of course. I will do my duty.”

  “I have no doubt, but this group is...special.” I pull up the holographic displays, the images acquired and I smile as he does not gasp or react with shocked disbelief but simply flares his nostrils and look curiously angry. “The Emperor fears them. That’s why I have been instructed to conquer them. They are much like us, but short and weak.” I give the young man a significant look. “You could disguise yourself as one of them.”

  He bows. “It’s my honor to serve.” Then Zaladin looks up. “How—?” He frowns. “Do we know why they look so close to Sarcodinay?”

  I laugh. “Oh, now that is the thing. The very secret the Emperor so fears. You see, they do not look like us.”

  “They don’t?”

  “No. We look like them.”

  He only raised an eyebrow and waited for the explanation.

  “We used to be them. Gaze upon the heresy of heresies, my dear Zaladin: gaze upon the forefathers of the Sarcodinay race. The Keepers didn’t create us. They relocated us.”

  ggg

  We shook ourselves out of our mind’s eyes and I heard a male Sarcodinay voice say, “Arrest her.” I looked up in time to see the High Guard advancing on Tirris.

  My heart whispered no and no and no and NO and screamed NO and shouted NO and sobbed no but not a word escaped my lips. I stood up and turned towards where Tirris Vahn was backing slowly away and if my eyes were capable of color change the way a Sarcodinay’s were they would have been red for hate. I saw red and felt red and at that moment I might have betrayed every value I held dear and smeared every atom of Tirris Vahn’s mind across the universe.

  I washed her pull a brooch from her chest and press it, and even with gold blood streaming down her face, she was beautiful and triumphant.

  Solaris shook as a bomb ripped parts of the station open to naked, ugly space.

  “You can stop me or you can save your leaders, your precious boy-king,” Tirris proclaimed. “I think your duty to him is the more important.”

  Her head jerked back as I attacked her mind, and I felt a tiny bit of satisfaction as she put her hand to her nose and regarded the blood coming from it with something like shock. I didn’t care, in that moment, if she attacked me back, if she killed me too. Maybe I even welcomed the idea of what seemed like a lesser pain.

  Tirris Vahn had no time, though, no time to wait while High Guard decided that they only needed some of them to evacuate the Emperor, no time to dally while one of Ernak Szabo’s men decided that they would never have a better chance to kill her.

  She ran from the room and true to her prom
ise, the High Guard had more important matters to deal with: the warning klaxons of atmospheric alarms, the panic of the spectators in the room, all the security trying to get everyone out.

  High Guard carried off the unconscious Emperor and I felt hands lift me under the arms. I kicked out at someone, blindly, and heard someone cry out in pain, but then there was a soothing warm hand on my brow and a deep voice whispering, “Sleep, soldier,” and the pain faded into nothingness.

  At least for a little while.

  TWENTYFOUR.Zaladin

  I heard footsteps behind me as I sat in the middle of the red, black and white tiled halls of Zarcovalla Kovaal. I stared at the statue of my mother, wondering if it was an accurate likeness. I suspected someone had made some artistic improvisations if the bust size was any indication. Apparently it was an unwritten requirement that fertility goddesses possessed hefty bosoms. I didn’t turn my head as the footsteps grew closer.

  “When you didn’t attend Paul’s funeral, I began to think you hadn’t survived,” Alexander Rhodes said.

  I sighed and shrugged, still looking at the statue. “My apologies for that. I’d have been there, but I was still in a holding cell courtesy of Szabo Ernak, while they figured out what to do with me.”

  “Oh?” He stopped next to me. “What did the League Council decide?”

  “I was never on Solaris.” I looked up at him. “Too difficult to explain what happened otherwise, too many questions. You know, I once had a man tell me the secret to getting away with something is to create a situation where the MOJ officer would be too embarrassed to turn in the paperwork. This seem to be an example of