The Nemesis

by S. J. Kincaid

  The transmission tower was not so far away. Within a moment, the explosive blast sent a violent shudder through the stony passage in which I stood, causing dust and ash to billow into the air and blot out the glow of halogen lighting. As the dust thickened, the world grew dark, and an ominous rumble came from the walls. Shouts rang out as the chamber buckled and heaved.

  I gagged and choked, pushing forward as panicked bodies buffeted me. Finding a pocket of fresher air, I paused, blinking to make sure it was not my imagination—the dust was settling, the darkness receding. But a sudden rockfall sparked renewed panic around me, and I fought for my footing amid the people rushing to escape.

  As the air once again cleared, I spied survivors scrambling for safety, trampling bodies as they fought to exit. My ears were ringing from the blast, but through that din, I caught the shrill screams of the trapped.

  I stepped on someone’s arm and instinctively reached down to drag the person up… and found myself hauling up a child no older than Atmas.

  A cold horror washed over me. Nemesis lived, did she? What marvels she brought to the people! How many more atrocities would be committed in her name?

  Hot determination surged through me. The crowd still flowed toward us, and I thrust myself in the opposite direction, my sheer physical power keeping me upright against the tide of bodies. I reached down amid kicking legs and hauled out those who were trapped beneath the feet of others. Then I forged forward and sought those in greater peril, crushed beneath the displaced rock, crushed against the ground, suffocating.

  There were cries of gratitude from those whom I liberated, but I ignored them, surging ahead to free the next, and the next.

  After an immeasurable time, I emerged from my trance and found the skin of my hands scraped bloody, my lungs raw from the toxic, gritty air. Those still half-buried were blue and clearly dead. There was nobody else to save.

  I rubbed my bloodied hands on my trousers, aware now of the heavy silence engulfing this chamber.

  That silence was animate: it was the deliberate, hushed silence of a hundred observers or more, all of them watching me with charged expressions, stricken or reverent or wondering.

  They had witnessed my strength. Watched me lift debris too heavy for a human to hoist.

  With Janus’s words ringing in their ears, and my image fresh in their minds, they knew exactly who I was.

  Some broke into tears, then, and sagged to their knees. Others gawked, their lips forming words that their ragged breath could not carry.

  And yet some still found the strength to speak them.

  “Nemesis lives.”

  “Nemesis.”

  “Nemesis lives!”

  I swallowed what tasted like blood. It would be their blood, soon enough, if they spread word of what they had seen today.

  And they would. People could not hold their tongues.

  At least I could be away from the sight of these kneeling people, the onrush of attention sure to follow.

  “Stay away,” I said unsteadily. “All of you.” Then I whipped around and left them there, moving as quickly as I could through my aches and pains.

  A clock had just begun ticking. Tyrus would learn I was alive, and he would come after me.

  From now on, I would be hunted.

  * * *

  The Excess learned where Anguish and I lived. They thronged the corridor outside the Obsidian Tower Dwellings, eager for a glimpse of me.

  It was a disaster.

  I did not intend to speak to any of them. Not to the crowd of miners who gathered outside our dwelling to call for me to emerge, not even to the Viceroy who cleared her way through the crowd to officially seek an introduction. She tapped on the door until I shouted through it, “Begone or I will kill you!”

  That sent her away.

  I drew the window slats to block out the sight of the ever-growing crowd. By nightfall, it seemed that the entire population of Devil’s Shade had pressed its way into the mine shaft to catch a glimpse of the one fabled to be Nemesis. The Nemesis.

  Our intercom chimed relentlessly, disturbing Anguish from his restless slumber.

  “What is happening?” Anguish said to me hazily. He tried to push himself upright but fell again, his sheet matted with sweat.

  My gaze swept over his graying skin, his sunken cheeks, and the sickening yellow sheen now creeping into the whites of his eyes.

  “Nothing, Anguish. Go back to sleep.”

  Then I turned to the intercom and smashed it with the butt of my blasting rifle.

  When more hands began to knock, and then pound on the door, I lost patience, aimed my rifle toward it, and shot at the wall—too high for anyone’s head.

  The weapon’s punctures did what my words could not.

  No one knocked again for several hours.

  I fell asleep facing the door, rifle in my arms, Anguish’s deep breathing the only sound in the room with me. There was no moving him, and no hope of escape. Spaceworthy vessels would not arrive until the formal transport window three weeks from now.

  It was just a matter of waiting here in our dwelling until Tyrus’s forces reached us.

  After a time, I crawled into the bed next to Anguish and rested my head on his shoulder, the way we’d sometimes done before his illness, back in those months after Corcyra. We’d taken his pod to a small moon and avoided humans altogether while I healed, roving abandoned wilderness areas, sleeping in the open with the stars above us, killing and devouring prey that we roasted over primitive, wood-fed fires.

  Nostalgia was a strange emotion, not one I’d often felt before. But it filled me now, a sweet, gnawing, poisonous ache. That had been an easier time. We hadn’t spoken much—speech had come to seem superfluous, a distinctly human affectation. With looks alone, we communicated everything necessary. Two Diabolics, in our very own wilderness far removed from the moon’s human settlers, alone beneath a vast sky.

  That the wilderness could feel like our proper place had taken me by surprise. We had both been born and raised in the sterile environs of space, and at first, the changing weather, the rain and humidity, had seemed like affronts. The sun tormented my unpigmented skin. Anguish loathed the biting insects.

  But we adjusted. Anguish grew indifferent to the stings. I found a soothing soil that, mixed with water, protected me from the scorching blaze of the white dwarf star overhead.

  What a luxury to smell the fragrance of flowers in the wind. To step on living ground, and watch the rain water it into green abundance.

  One night, as a fire crackled between us, Anguish spoke my own thoughts.

  “I understand the Excess at last. I see why the Partisans coveted their own planets. A ship does not compare.”

  No, it did not.

  I had learned to sleep peacefully through evenings rattled by wind through trees. But Anguish did not rest so easily. Sometimes, at night, he’d murmured Neveni’s name. When his dreams woke me, I’d watch his face and feel the stirring of empathy.

  Diabolics were not supposed to be able to love. But Anguish and I had both learned differently, to our sorrow, with Neveni and Tyrus.

  But now—to our joy, because we had become a family. Like a brother and sister, linked by blood and our shared nightmares, our shared heartbreak.

  I closed my eyes now and listened to his breathing, shallow and rapid even in his sleep. My breathing wanted to match his. Had I had the power, I would have given my own life’s blood to restore his health.

  Instead my actions today had damned us both.

  Oh, what did it matter? Really, what difference did it make that I had been exposed?

  We were at the end of a road. We had been approaching it since he first began to lose his memory, to forget the details, to stumble and fall when walking.

  I have done everything in my power to save you, Anguish. I swear it, I thought. And now, if need be, I will die by your side.

  A tentative tap at the door sliced through my sleep, and my eyes snapped
open.… The silence reverberated. The crowd had dispersed, it seemed.

  “Nym? Empress Nemesis?”

  I knew that small voice.

  Oh no.

  My gaze flew toward the door. It could be a trap. Maybe someone had ascertained that I knew this irritating child and had coerced her into coming here.

  And yet… she was here, and if she was waiting with a weapon to her head, I could make certain it was removed. I drew my rifle and prowled over to the door, then slapped it open and aimed.

  6

  JUST THE TWO of them. Alone. Atmas gave a squeak and ducked behind her father.

  “S-sorry. I’m sorry,” stammered the nervous Stalis—the overseer of the acid ponds who’d paid me little mind until now.

  Fool! “Why would you come here?” I glanced down the empty corridor. The hall was never empty. The rest of the Obsidian Tower Dwellings had been evacuated by the Viceroy, whether in fear of me or in deference to me, I knew not. “Who sent you?”

  “We came on our own. My cousin does maintenance here.” He took a deep breath. “My daughter was desperate to see you, Your Supremacy.”

  Nonsense. I did not believe for a moment that this man had risked dire consequences just to satisfy his child’s stupid wish. But I lowered my weapon, nodded for them to enter, and closed the door behind them.

  Stalis had brought my last week’s wages, along with a satchel of dried eel. He darted a nervous glance toward the visibly ill Anguish, then offered to prepare a stew. Atmas, meanwhile, stood staring up at me with wide, awestruck eyes.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked her, torn between irritation and that inexplicable, unwilling affection that she stirred in me. “Make yourself useful by helping your father. The heating unit’s in the corner,” I said to Stalis, pointing the way to our small kitchen. After all, Anguish could use the nourishment.

  “Are you really the Empress Nemesis?” said Atmas. Her eyes took in my scarred face, seeing the truth of me now.

  I touched it self-consciously. Strange how exposed I felt. “Yes.”

  “I knew it!” she cried. “I always knew!”

  “Oh, certainly,” I said, doubting her.

  “Can I ask why you’re here?” called Stalis abruptly, and clanged an empty pot into the sink, before turning on the water to fill it. “The rumors are—”

  “All inaccurate,” I bit out.

  “Not all of them,” he said. “You’re alive.”

  “ ‘Nemesis lives.’ ” My bitter tone startled him, which did nothing to help my temper. “That is the only fact that people have right. The Partisans blew me up, Stalis. It’s why my face looks this way. My own husband tried to kill me. Me, not an imposter. If there were a single spaceworthy transport on this sun-scorned planet, I would already be gone. You’re a fool to have come here. Leave now, and pretend you never knew me. Otherwise, you may die with me.”

  He’d finished depositing the eels and a collection of dried vegetables into the simmering water. Now he turned and stepped back from the convection plate. “Your Supremacy…” Visibly gathering his resolve, he said, “You can stop him.”

  A laugh scraped from me. “Is that so?”

  “You must see the Emperor has gone mad,” Stalis said, desperate. “He creates malignant space. He demands we worship him.…”

  “I know.” The words barely escaped my lips. I knew all too well.

  “You’re the only one who can speak against him. People will listen to you!”

  The stew had begun simmering, casting the sulfurous scent of the eel into the air. “People will take up arms if you ask it of them.”

  “The Partisans have asked it of them for centuries.”

  “No one believes in the Partisans. They’re terrorists. People believe in you.”

  “Oh, they believe in me, do they?” He flinched from my sneer, and I felt no pity for scaring him. “So you suggest I reward their faith by leading them to their deaths—is that it?”

  “I—”

  “You have no idea of the power you are up against! There is no glorious victory in a futile cause. There is no revolution possible against an Emperor with electronic eyes that watch your every move, machines that he can summon with a thought, a fleet of massive warships—”

  “But you are alive,” he cried. “You live. You have evaded him. Escaped him. Survived him!”

  “Until now,” I said flatly. “I have no weapons. Not even a ship. If you want to do something useful, Stalis, then tend to your daughter. Protect her. Hide with her far away from me, whatever happens.”

  His eyes fell upon the counter by the stove and halted there. It took me a moment to follow his gaze, to see what he was looking upon.…

  The pile of drawings Atmas had given me over time.

  I cursed inwardly at myself, for not throwing those away.

  They seemed to give Stalis courage. He stepped around the stove, walked toward me with a square-shouldered courage that few men had ever shown a Diabolic. “What about Atmas? My daughter has no future in an Empire where we must call Tyrus von Domitrian our God. Don’t you see? We are people of faith. We won’t profane ourselves for a mere Emperor. How long do you think we will remain safe?”

  I closed my eyes. Perhaps he was right: Devil’s Shade would never have been safe forever. But my actions today had ensured that the danger would arrive sooner than even Stalis imagined.

  “Stop this,” he pleaded. “End this. You are our only chance.”

  Others had said similar things, once. They had called me their only hope, and they had sent me to Corcyra, to assassinate Tyrus.

  And I had failed them utterly.

  Even now, looking at these two members of the Excess who would live and die at his whims, I could feel no hatred for Tyrus, only a crushing remorse at his desecration.

  We’d vowed to make this galaxy better.

  He’d had such beautiful dreams.

  How to salvage a dream, when the dreamer himself had been destroyed?

  Stalis looked at me with exhausted, tearful, impassioned hope. But when I contemplated the size of this Empire, a helplessness washed over me. How arrogant we’d been to imagine that even an Emperor and Empress could reform something so vast.

  Act to change things? I couldn’t even bring myself to kill Tyrus after what he’d done to me.

  “You need to leave,” I said. “Now.”

  He gave a noise of objection, but I didn’t let him voice it. I seized him, dragged him to the door, and hurled him out. Then I turned on Atmas and gave a single jab with my thumb.

  “Out.”

  She stared at me, lip jutting mutinously. “Daddy said you would fix things.”

  “For Helios’s sake,” I cried. “Atmas, your father knows nothing. Everyone wishes someone would come and save them, and no one ever does.”

  “But you’re Nemesis.”

  I approached and took hold of her shoulders, fighting the temptation to shake her until she let go of the ludicrous notions that adults had been pouring into her head. “Don’t you understand that if you wait for a hero to come and solve your problems, nothing will ever change? Some problems are too large for a single person. Expect nothing of people—especially me.”

  Her eyes grew glassy with tears. I fought an odd, deranged need to apologize—to temper my tone and speak falsehoods to her. I’m sorry. It will all be well, I promise. There’s no need for you to worry.

  Instead I steered her to the door and nudged her out after her father. He refused to look at me, and so I grabbed his hand and stuffed the wage chips into his palm.

  “I won’t need them now,” I said, then pulled the door shut.

  The quiet sank around me. Anguish lay as still as a corpse at the center of a tomb.

  Save him? Help them? Rescue the Empire? Absurd.

  I couldn’t even save myself.

  * * *

  Anguish and I did not have long to wait. We could not escape the planet, and his deteriorating condition would h
ave made it nearly impossible to scout out a hiding place, had there even been one that could evade the Emperor’s all-seeing machines. Instead I gathered our scant supply of weapons and waited for the attack to come. Tyrus, I assumed, would have received word of my reappearance within minutes of it occurring.

  I was correct.

  Days later, we awoke to an alarm ringing through the mining complex, and shouts outside. I swiped up my pulse rifle and rushed to the window. A single glimpse at the stone corridor outside showed security bots soaring through Harvester Row, headed our way.

  My hand found Anguish’s shoulder where he remained in his deep, fitful sleep. With grief knotting in my throat, I shook him awake. I helped him sit up, helped him rest against the wall behind him.

  I gripped his face. “Anguish, they’ve come for us.”

  “Today?” He slurred the word, his eyes unable to maintain focus on my face.

  My heart sank. He would be little help.

  “Yes,” I said, “today.” I dug under the bed for the second pulse rifle and placed it into his uncertain grip.

  Together we waited, listening to the mounting clamor outside, the shouts and heavy footsteps, the drone and hum of machinery. The noises grew louder and louder, closer and closer—

  A laser sliced through the wall before us.

  Anguish and I both tensed, weapons in hand. Blood surged through my veins, hot and eager. It was time.

  More lasers seared through the wall, opening a fissure. The first of the star-shaped security bots erupted into the room. I raised my pulse rifle to unload fire into it.

  Anguish collapsed.

  He fell with a heavy thump, his pulse rifle sliding away from his limp, splayed hand.

  My own hand froze around the trigger.

  If I was alone, survival meant nothing. The fight ahead meant nothing.

  I threw myself down over him to shield him with my last breath.

  The bots veered toward us, their lasers locking onto me, and I did not care. What good was a fight without something to defend? Even Diabolics needed love to power our hate.