by Viki Storm
Pior said that he’d sold Lia to the Rulmek Commander Krwlg, and I knew that he was going to sell her to Tos, the leader of the Guuklar.
I contacted Orlon and asked him to tap into Rulmek communications. He grumbled about it but got back to me fifteen minutes later, confirming my suspicions that a small Rulmek craft opened a comm-link with the Guuklar planet and had set a nav course for the capital city.
I took the ship into warp, despite Pior’s protests that this ship was old and couldn’t make such a journey. The ship made it, though all sorts of warning lights were flashing and beeping by the time we got there.
That’s when I started to drop the bombs.
It was a new sensation of bloodlust, of combat glee. I was giddy, like a schoolgirl who just got a love letter from her number one crush.
The flames spread, and it wasn’t long before they were shooting back at us. Pior was deathly white next to me, looking like he was about to be sick, but he dutifully co-piloted, navigating and dodging incoming missiles.
The Imperial Mansion was easy to spot. I know Lia is in there somewhere, so I don’t want to vaporize the building, but I do need to create a little chaos.
I lock in on the front doors, feeling that it’s a safe target. The missile whizzes down to the ground, exploding on the mansion’s steps. Pior jukes the ship to the left, dodging a nearby ship gunning for us. We go around to the back of the mansion and carpet it with smaller explosives. I have no idea where they were keeping Lia, but the comms that Orlon intercepted had used the phrase ‘Personal Harem,’ so I can only imagine she’s in a locked room somewhere in this mansion.
“Land this fucker on the roof,” I shout at Pior. “We’re going in.” I drop one lightly charged explosive, and it creates a perfect little hole in the roof.
“It won’t hold the weight of this ship,” he says. “It will collapse, and we won’t be able to fly it out of here.”
“Then we’ll have to get another ship to fly out of here,” I say, “because we aren’t walking through the front door.”
“I’ll hover,” he says. “You drop down. I’ll circle around and try not to die. Send a comm when you find her, and we’ll figure out a rendezvous point.”
I think about his plan for a moment. I don’t have long to decide. His plan is a decent one. There’s a high likelihood that he will be shot out of the air while waiting for us, but then again, if we collapse the roof, there’s a hundred-percent chance that the ship will be useless for a getaway anyway. The other problem with the plan is that I have to trust the male who sold me to a fighting pit and sold Lia to the Rulmek. He’s been working faithfully with me so far, but it’s been under the implicit threat of violence if he doesn’t. Can I trust him? Do I have a choice?
“Okay,” I say, consigning myself to the whims of the Universe. If it is in my fate to get out of here with Lia, my mate, then the Universe will see our safe passage off of this Void-worshiping planet. If not, well, there’s not much you can do to change the mind of the Universe.
He nods and dips the ship down so it hovers just a meter above the roof. I jump out, inwardly expecting to be vaporized by an anti-aircraft missile. I land on the roof and quickly descend through the blasthole. I drop down about three meters and land on a richly woven carpet. It would have been a nice cushion to break my fall if not for the shards of stone and metal sprinkled throughout its nap.
A few Guuklar are running about, but they seem more concerned with saving their own hides than roasting mine. They are most likely house servants, not warriors, unarmed and their duty consisting of serving meals and washing windows rather than planetary defense.
I see a female running toward me, her already wide eyes even wider with terror. I grab her and spin her toward me. “Where is the harem?” I ask, hoping that the language procedure sufficiently altered my brain to speak their language.
She points down the hallway she just came from. “Show me,” I say. She tries to break free from my hand, but I hold tight. I drag her along with me and she reluctantly follows. We get to a thick wooden door, ornate with shining gold finishings. I pull on the handle and the door does not open. I see that there’s an old-fashioned metal lock, what we call founder’s locks in Zalaryx, instead of a digital keypad. I take the laser gun I purchased back on Irji and blast the lock. The female Guuklar shrieks when the door splinters and tries to run away again.
Inside I see about ten females, mostly human, but there is one Zalaryn and a few other races I can’t name off-hand.
Lia is not in there.
“The new one?” I ask the Guuklar female. She looks at me confused, and I realize that if she’s a cook or laundry worker, she’s not going to know about the new harem addition.
“New one?” the female Zalaryn asks me in our native tongue. She would be considered beautiful on Zalaryx. She is physical perfection, her body not beset by the Sickness that plagued our females up until a few generations ago. Yet somehow, I only notice her beauty in a clinical sort of way. Compared to Lia, no other females in the entire universe can elicit any feelings of lust or desire. Not anymore. Once a Zalaryn male has found his mate, all other females might as well cease to exist.
“Yes, the leader purchased a human female last night. Do you know where she is?”
“Probably,” the Zalaryn says. “He takes all his new females into the fighting room.”
“Fighting room?” I ask. “Can you show me?”
“Yes,” she says. “He likes to fight them, make them submit.” Now I want to puke. She rises to her feet and walks to my side. I let the squirming Guuklar female go. To the rest of the females, I say, “Stay here, we will return for you.” I wonder if all ten of them plus Pior and Lia and I will fit into Pior’s small ship. Fuck it, we’ll make them fit.
The Zalaryn female leads me downstairs to the second floor. It is hotter here, the flames from the explosion at the front door spreading. She stops and points at a door. This one is equipped with a digital lock, and I hesitate before I shoot at it. If I short it out, I can pop the lock and the door will slide open easy as can be… or I can fry the circuits completely and it will be permanently closed.
As I’m wondering what to do, the Zalaryn reaches out and keys the code.
“He tells us the code,” she explains. “Says if we can get out, we’ll be free. It’s to mess with our heads.”
“I’ll bet,” I say.
The door slides open and my heart stops.
Lia is holding a longsword in one hand and some sort of spiked cudgel in the other. Tos, the Guuklar leader, is nude and laughing. It is a frightful sight, to be sure. Lia is fatigued to the point of exhaustion, and I wonder how she has the strength left to hold the heavy weapons. The Guuklar is light on his feet, hopping around and inviting her to strike. He is bloodied up in plenty of spots but not seeming to feel the effects. Lia has dried blood caked on her face, and one of her sleeves is torn away, but she looks to be in relatively good shape, considering.
Tos turns to us, his mouth agape for just a split second before he composes himself. “How did you get in here?” he asks casually. “Leave us and kindly return Lorka to her room.”
He doesn’t know what’s going on outside, I realize. Just then, in the corridor, a beam from the roof cracks and gives way, landing a few feet to the left of Lorka. She jumps towards me, clearing the beam easily.
“What is going on?” Tos asks. “Is that fire?” He’s been so absorbed in the sport of the Fighting Room that it takes him a moment to realize that something serious is happening.
Lia, however, is not lost in amusement and she takes the chance to slice the longsword across his ankle, sliding it deep through the tendons. It sinks in deep, and his scream is the perfect melody to my ears. He drops to a knee, and when he does, she kicks him in the face. I can tell it pains her because her foot is bare, and she winces on impact. The Guuklar’s head jerks back, and he howls in pain. Lia raises the cudgel and hits him on the top of the head with all her might.
There is a whip-crack noise, but I notice there is no blood, no skull fragments shooting through the air. I have seen crippling skull blows on the battlefield, and this blow—strong and true as it was—is not producing the telltale signs of a mortal wound.
“Let’s go!” I shout to Lia. She runs to me, still gripping her two weapons. Without being asked, she hands one to Lorka and takes my hand with hers. Tos is clutching his head, but I know he will be on his feet soon enough.
We race back up the stairs to get the females from the harem. And I send a comm to Pior in the ship. Remarkably, not only is he still alive, but he answers, too.
“Can you get back to that roof hole?” he asks.
“I can get to the hole, but it’s gonna be hard to climb out of it,” I say.
“That’s no problem,” he says. “Stand back.”
“Stand back?” I ask, but right then, there is an explosion and the hole in the roof grows as Pior forces the ship down.
“Holy hells,” Lia says. “Is that Pior?”
“Yes,” I say. “I’ll explain later.”
“He’s the last person I expected to see,” she says. “Did you at least cut off his balls for being the traitor he is?”
“Shut up and get on the damn ship,” I tell her and push her to the door. The females file inside. It’s surprising how little room they take up, huddled together in the two sleeping cots, in the bathroom, in the storage cabinets. Pior proves his worth as a pilot, getting us out of the Guuklar atmosphere and into warp with remarkable speed.
After we’re in the air for a while, Lia finally speaks to him. “We’re not even,” she says. “Don’t think that this makes us even.”
“We’ll never be even,” he says. I notice his voice is shaky, much quieter than before. “Not after what I did.”
That’s when I notice the blood pooling at his feet.
He’s clutching his side and sweating profusely. Lia notices, too, because she rushes to his side and pulls his hand away. There is a gaping wound, likely from a ground projectile.
“They shot through the window,” he says, pointing at the co-pilot side window. “I got away and ran the patching sequence on the busted window so we could get to warp without the ship turning inside-out.”
“You’ll be okay,” Lia says.
“No, I won’t,” he says. “Can’t you smell the shit? My guts are scrambled eggs. This is it for me. But get my daughter. Please. And don’t do it for me. I wouldn’t dare ask you a favor. Don’t even do it for her. Do it for the Rulmek. She’s the key. She has everything you need to get rid of those fuckers once and for all. Our work, our weapons, our network of fighters—she’s the key to everything. That’s why the Rulmek took her. If you can get her, you can stop them.”
He says no more, that last burst of speech draining whatever reserves of energy he’d been holding onto.
We manage to shuffle around the small ship and let Pior lie down on one of the cots. Two of the harem females wipe his face with a cool cloth and mutter things to him while we all wait for the inevitable.
It comes about two hours later, when we’re about a day out from Lekyo Prime. We have no choice; we launch him out into the Void.
Lia says a few words—and to my surprise, none of them are profane.
LIA
Home. My real home. The home of my heart, the home I’ve denied myself, even in dreams.
It feels like half the planet is here, waiting to see our return.
Waiting to see Princess Lia, guessing and whispering about what they did to her, where she’s been, who she had to fuck to survive, who she had to kill to escape. That’s what the old me would have thought. Captain Lia, commander of The Golden Plague.
Now? I think they’re just happy.
We land, and the Zalaryn female, Lorka, leads the others off of the ship. I look out the window and smile when I see the confusion on the faces in the crowd.
Then I see one confused face that stops my blood cold.
Bryn.
She’s wearing a simple silken gown, but it looks luxurious and decadent compared to what I’ve been used to. There is swelling in her belly, and I remember what Bantokk told me. She’s mated to one of the Zalaryns, taken him as King.
Bantokk puts his hand over mine and starts to say something, but I yank my hand away. This is something I need to do alone.
I rush out of the ship, almost tripping and falling flat on my face. Bantokk set my nose as best he could, but the last thing I need is to break it again.
“Lia!” Bryn screams, running across the dirt. I hope she doesn’t trip over a rock and fall on her belly.
“Bryn,” I shout. I’m running, too, and so are the tears down my face.
We embrace fiercely, and in a second—no, less than a second, in a pure instant—it is like I never left. Home, family. The place where you can always go back to. The place that fits you like a glove.
We say nothing because in most ways, there is nothing to say. There are questions, of course, the who what where when why, but those are largely meaningless.
Who? Me. Us.
What? I’m home.
Where? Right here.
When? Right now.
Why? Because I belong here.
Those are the only questions that matter, and those are the ones that don’t need asking.
The citizens of Lekyo Prime, human and Zalaryn alike, start to applaud and cheer. They are happy for us—happy for me—even though so many of them had family members taken during that Rulmek raid who never came back.
The old me would have started screaming, telling them to fuck off and mind their own business. The new me? I barely register them, except to feel the goodwill pulsing off of the crowd in bright hot waves that fill me up with something weird, something foreign. But not something altogether forgotten.
Happiness.
Bantokk is at my side, and I turn to him. “I’m overflowing with joy,” I whisper to him. “I don’t know what to do. I’m used to overflowing with hate, rage, vengeance—but joy, this is something new.”
“I guess you’re just supposed to be happy,” he says.
“Yes,” Bryn finally says. “Just be happy. Even if it’s hard. I’ll show you to your room. We have all the time in the world to catch up, but I would assume that right now all you want is a hot bath and a soft bed. Is that correct? Do you need a healer, as well?”
“No healer,” I say. “But yes to the first two.” Though in truth a hot bath and soft bed sound too luxurious. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to relax enough to enjoy them.
“All hail Queen Lia,” someone in the crowd yells, and soon enough, they’re all shouting it.
Queen Lia? Is that who I am now?
- - -
My bath is indeed hot, and my bed is indeed soft—and Bantokk is sharing both with me. I wouldn’t have it any other way. We haven’t had a moment alone since he got me from the Guuklar Imperial Mansion. There are so many things that I’ve wanted to say but couldn’t when we were stuffed shoulder-to-shoulder inside Pior’s ship.
Fucking Pior. Bantokk told me his story, and I still don’t know what to think about it. The old me would be cursing his name, insisting that his good deed of helping us on the Guuklar planet does nothing to erase the stain of his betrayal. The new me? I’m just glad to be alive and out of that hellhole.
But there’s still something between Bantokk and me, tension I suppose. A barrier between the full merging of our hearts. The bonding, he calls it, exchanging genetic material. I’ve seen enough carnage and heard enough horror stories to know that exchanging genetic material is a meaningless, often brutal, physical act—the act itself is neither inherently good nor bad, despite Bantokk’s insistence that the physical bond is every bit as important as the emotional bond.
I’m almost ready to proceed with the physical. Almost. I need to clear my conscience first. Then, if he’ll have me, I’ll be ready.
We are lying in bed, Bantokk dozing lightly, drifting in and
out of an uneasy sleep. I am ramrod straight, wired up like a circuit board, unable to calm my thoughts. He shifts and puts his arm around me, pulling me close.
“Bantokk,” I say. “I need you to listen to me.”
“Of course, Queen Lia,” he teases.
“First of all,” I say, “I am not the queen, nor will I ever be. Bryn can keep that. I might have made a good queen once, but not now.”
“Then what are you now?”
“I’m not sure yet, but definitely not queen. Whatever it is I’ve become, I’m not suited to negotiations and treaties and settling disputes.”
“You’re right,” he says. “You’re more the type to start a dispute than to resolve it.”
“Exactly,” I say. “I don’t even know if I can stay here. It’s good to be home, and for once I really do feel a sense of belonging—real belonging, not the substitute camaraderie of the Three-Star Rebels. But I know myself well enough to know I’ll get itchy feet after a few weeks or a few months.”
“I know the feeling,” he says.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. I don’t know what I’m going to do or where I’m going to go. But I do know that I want you to be a part of it.” The words leave my mouth quietly, almost shakily. I’m not good at this sort of thing, emotions.
I barely started having them—and talking about them is even worse.
“I want to be a part of it,” he says. “I need to be a part of it. I can’t envision any future without you.”
“And that’s the problem,” I say. “I have been free for ten years. As you can imagine, I value that above all else. I don’t know what it’s going to be like having to think about someone else, take someone else’s thoughts and welfare into consideration. I will be anchored to another person. Worse than that, I will rely on another person. I have been self-sufficient for a long time and I like it that way. I don’t want to need another person. And it will only be a matter of time until I become pregnant.”