The Nemesis

by S. J. Kincaid

  I had reached the boarding artery to the Retribution when the security bots surrounded me. A gleaming phalanx of metallic stars, they aimed their lasers directly at my head.

  I stopped and looked up at them wearily, fixing my gaze on one of the pinpoint cameras that was feeding surveillance images directly to Tyrus.

  “Go ahead.” I spread my arms. “Shoot me.”

  The machines hovered noiselessly. It would take but a thought from Tyrus to direct their destruction of me, or for that matter, to make a nearby intercom broadcast his verbal response.

  Instead he let the silence extend, let it thicken.

  I was sick of his talent for drama. “I won’t be your goddess. That’s impossible now, anyway. As for your flock—you have collected the most despicable sort of humans to your banner. Most Excess are good, but I see the worst among them here, so eager to enforce your lie upon others, to punish those who dare to believe other than they do. They are repugnant, and they suit you well now—for you are not the Tyrus I knew. You’re a sick, desecrated shadow of the Tyrus I loved. So just shoot me, Emperor Tyrus—and be sure to kill Anguish, while you’re at it. You own my fate, but you will never own my will.”

  As my words hung on the air, my body began to ache—and not simply from the blows I’d taken at the hands of the mob. My heart felt like a great, clanging hollow. There was nothing left to believe in. Not in this universe or any other.

  I was so tired. I was ready for this to end.

  The security bots parted silently, clearing my way onto Retribution.

  For an incredulous moment, I hesitated, expecting some treachery. Then, cautiously, I backed away from them into the boarding artery.

  They hung in the air, watching.

  I turned around and began to walk.

  A dreadful premonition seized me.

  I burst into a sprint, flying down the boarding artery, convinced now that something dreadful awaited within the Retribution—some hideous vengeance for the decision I’d made today.

  But as I reached the ship, I spotted Anguish dragging the last of the dead Inquisitors toward the exit. His pulse rifle whipped up—then lowered at the sight of me. He looked over my bloodied state and grinned approvingly.

  “I saw the feed from the arena,” he said. “I thought I’d help.”

  I stared at him. “You’re well.”

  “Better once we take this vessel and leave. Or try,” Anguish said.

  “Anguish, the only reason you’re alive is because I promised to cooperate with him. I broke that bargain today. Do not help me, condemn me. I’ve betrayed you.”

  He scoffed, then dropped the dead Inquisitor and strode over to me. Taking my shoulders in his large hands, he looked directly into my eyes.

  “If I live, I live. If I die, so be it. It will be on our terms. Not his. You never betrayed me. And now, you have not betrayed yourself.”

  My throat closed. I did not deserve his forgiveness. But how easily and wholeheartedly he gave it.

  I flung myself against his chest. He hugged me so hard that he knocked the wind from me. But I welcomed his grip. The weight of today’s decision left me unsteady, and his embrace kept me upright, firmly on my feet.

  “We’ll find a way out of this,” I said.

  The Retribution shuddered suddenly around us. We pulled apart, exchanging a wordless look before sprinting together to the command nexus.

  A curious sight waited out the windowed wall before us.

  Our boarding artery was retracting all on its own; we were drifting back from the dock.

  “You…?” I said to Anguish.

  Jaw tense, he shook his head.

  A cold feeling ghosted over me. Whatever was happening here, it was not on our terms, but Tyrus’s.

  “What is going on?” I demanded to the air. He was certainly eavesdropping on us even now. “Tyrus! What do you have planned?”

  “A truce.”

  His calm voice floated on the air behind me, and Anguish and I both spun to see the holographic projectors alight with his image. After an hour of bloodshed and chaos, it felt jarring, surreal, to view his serene visage—the smile on his lips beneficent, even secretly amused.

  “You refuse to be my goddess. Very well.” His gaze flicked from me to Anguish, then back. “If we can’t reach an agreement, you’ll go your own way.”

  My hands balled into fists. “What a marvelous change of heart,” I said flatly. I would not believe it at sword point.

  “Take the Retribution. It’s yours.” He gestured about us with a single wave of his finger. “Anguish dan Domitrian? Live.”

  I caught my breath, not willing to believe.…

  “There’s a bot in the medical bay,” Tyrus said. “I’ve unlocked its full functions. It awaits you with your cure.”

  None of this made sense. I crossed my arms. “Why?”

  “Cannot a god be merciful?” Tyrus gave a one-shouldered shrug. “My condition of your survival is exile. Go to the most obscure reaches of imperial territory—and then keep going. I never wish to see you again.”

  “No. I’m sick of these games.” After what I had just done, he could not mean to let me go. “Whatever you mean to do, do it. I won’t run just so you can find amusement in chasing me.”

  His eyes were like ice. “I am not setting you free, Nemesis. I am exiling you. You caused me a public humiliation, and so I want you gone. Leave my territories. Never return.”

  Anguish made a low, contemptuous noise in his throat. “He deceives us.”

  “Test me,” Tyrus said icily. “If you wish to die today, then by all means, refuse to leave.”

  “Anguish,” I said in an undertone. “Get us out of here.”

  As Anguish turned to the navigation console, Tyrus went on. “As for those followers of mine who witnessed that debacle—”

  His despicable faithful.

  “You are right. I tried to be most gracious and magnanimous, spreading financial favors and largesse to those who hailed me most readily, but I comprehend that doing so has but attracted the worst sorts of opportunists and fools to my cause. Such cannot be trusted to remain silent about the events of today.”

  “Like with like: you deserve each other.”

  “Look out the window. Call this a… a divine act to delight your senses. Consider it my parting gift.”

  Outside the window, a lone vessel streaked toward the Halcyon. I caught my breath in horror as I realized what Tyrus intended.

  I’d despised those people. I’d felt nothing but contempt for them.

  But a cry escaped my lips as the ship erupted into a bright white flare and tore a skein of malignant space into the darkness. Within moments, it reached out and began to rip through the great cityship’s hull.

  Almost instantly, the vessel began to crumple into the bright ribbon of white and purple light. Flames erupted from all the ships tethered to the Halcyon, flames that bloomed like flowers before they, too, were swallowed into the malignancy, contracting into nothing.

  Nausea churned through me. Bile clogged my throat. I turned back, ready to spit it at Tyrus.

  He was already gone.

  14

  HE PLANNED it in advance, I thought.

  My eyes flew open, staring at the ceiling of the silent bunk, the realization sinking into me.

  I’d been twisting back and forth all night in a restless sleep, images of malignant space and the crumpling Halcyon tormenting my mind, and the faces of those pathetic, accursed Excess flashing before my eyes.

  But somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, my brain had latched upon one fact that revealed everything:

  He had moved all the art off the Halcyon.

  All those priceless artifacts of human history had been displaced, and instead there’d been Domitrian tributes everywhere. I’d believed it an act of pure egotism, but I knew Tyrus. I knew him. I knew how many contingencies he planned for, how far ahead he thought—and a sudden dreadful understanding set in:


  He moved the priceless art to protect it in case his plan went awry and he had to destroy those who witnessed my return.

  Oh stars, as soon as I realized it, I knew it was true. Of course he preserved the art.

  The malignant space hadn’t been a spontaneous act. That was the true reason he had not come in person, but rather appeared by hologram. He hadn’t decided on a rash impulse to kill the Excess, to obliterate the cityship.

  No, he’d planned it all in advance just in case I would not prove a willing tool in his hands. Then he’d executed it without a shred of remorse. The bastard. The bastard.

  A gift to me, he called it. That meant those deaths were laid directly at my feet—a response to my actions. Those deaths were my doing.

  I sat up in bed with my heart roiling in torment, hearing Anguish’s peaceful breathing from across the chamber. He’d long since dropped off to sleep. I rubbed my throbbing temples and just listened to his steady breathing. The sole blessing of this situation was Tyrus’s unexpected mercy with Anguish.

  Tyrus’s medical bot had performed as promised. Anguish was fully healed now. We could safely retreat into obscurity, as I’d wished.

  Yet with this terrible understanding unfurling in my mind, how could I? How could I run?

  I had been hiding. Most shamefully, I had been doing so all this time, ever since Corcyra. I had disavowed my power to change this galaxy’s situation. Now there were… only the stars knew how many dead, because of me. And how many more would follow?

  Tyrus had committed a premeditated act of mass murder.

  I had walked right into his chamber with no security field before us; I had thrown a knife awry. If I had but aimed it at his heart, this would not have happened.

  My chest and throat felt tight. This was not the first mass murder he’d committed. I’d seen him slay thousands—or had it been hundreds of thousands?—of Grandiloquy in that final day in the Chrysanthemum. But those had been enemies, who’d pushed our backs to the wall. They would have destroyed us.

  His ruthlessness had stunned me, regardless. Convinced that he was no longer fit to hold power, I had put myself between Tyrus and Gladdic and thrown my life away on Tyrus’s blade.

  This was worse.

  Infinitely worse.

  And this was all my responsibility.

  On a deep breath, I looked out the window, seeking solace in the pitch blackness of hyperspace—the one place Tyrus could never track us, no matter the tech he’d implanted in the Retribution.

  But the darkness did nothing to soothe my troubled thoughts. I rose and slipped out of the room.

  Perhaps it was the Interdict’s mark of blessing over my heart, but something compelled me to search out the vessel’s heliosphere. I found it tucked beneath the command nexus.

  I stepped into the great shroud of darkness and found myself gazing once again into the depthless expanse of hyperspace. We were flying at unimaginable speed, yet we might have been standing still, hanging in an abyss. My own shadowy reflection was all that moved against this void as I grappled for an understanding that still eluded me.

  Tyrus, where are you?

  I knew where his body was. It was living, animated flesh, ruling his Empire. His mind as well.

  But…

  But what of Tyrus? What of his true essence?

  For there had been a different Tyrus once. The real one, whom I’d loved before the Venalox destroyed him. Now someone with his face and name and memories ruled this universe—and sought to enslave it.

  I accepted at last, without doubt, that it all came back to the Tigris. To the day I should have let Tyrus die.

  Go into exile and live.

  Exile.

  I had spent the last years in a self-imposed exile, as though removing myself from the galaxy would somehow prove a salve to its wounds. Yet all I had done was let the evils I’d left behind fester and grow.

  Perhaps there was no fleeing reality.

  Perhaps there was a fundamental evil in turning your back to a situation when you still had the power to change it. And what would the Tyrus I’d loved—the true Tyrus, the lost Tyrus—think of me, running away into exile and allowing him to do this? I had to think his soul existed somewhere, intact, if no longer present behind those eyes I’d glimpsed on the Alexandria.

  If I fled again, how could I ever live with myself?

  The answer was this: I could not.

  Not everything could be undone. But some things could be mended.

  I would go to find the Tyrus who remained—this Emperor with his name and his face, who never would have existed but for one fateful decision I’d made. I should have let him die, but I had forced him to live.

  My mistake. I would mend it now. Nothing would stop me this time.

  This was not the first time I’d made this decision, but it was certainly the first time I knew in my very soul that I would do it. And it was the last time I would have need to make such a resolve.

  I stood in the darkened heliosphere before the sprawling windows and I swore on the Living Cosmos, on my very soul, that I would hunt Tyrus down.

  Then I would kill him.

  15

  ANGUISH DID NOT object to my new resolve. I did not expect him to.

  “He killed Enmity. He killed my master. He killed those Excess,” Anguish told me. “I am glad to rupture any agreement with him.”

  Before we acted against Tyrus, Anguish and I needed weapons and a ship that was not likely to be tracked. The Retribution was Tyrus’s gift to me, which meant it could not be trusted. Though Anguish and I had combed the vessel for surveillance tech, we would have had to physically dismantle the vessel before we could feel certain we had caught all the Emperor’s traps.

  So we set out to seize another ship. Anguish and I roved the outskirts of a highly trafficked system that supplied luxuries to the Chrysanthemum, waiting until a transport appeared on the edge of our sensors.

  “This one,” said Anguish, eyes gleaming with anticipation.

  “This one,” I agreed.

  We greeted the ship by filling every transmission frequency range with static, so they could not send a distress beacon.

  At that move, the freighter’s crew was on alert. Their sensors had to tell them we were unarmed, so they likely found our move a laughably empty threat. Weapons turrets rose from the steel flanks of their triangular vessel. The blasting laser’s depths bloomed red as they charged and readied to fire.

  “What now?” Anguish said to me.

  I might have no tactical understanding, but I knew what I’d do if I were fighting face-to-face. Like a Diabolic, the Retribution was tough: heavily armored, a defensive citadel that could endure far more punishment than the freighter could.

  “Just ram them,” I told Anguish.

  “This may be a fatal error. We could both explode on impact.”

  “Then we won’t have very long to lament our mistake. Do it.”

  He blasted the thrusters and propelled us straight into the other vessel. Though we both gripped for support, the impact sent us careening across the floor of the command nexus. I scrabbled back to my feet and over to the central console. With a flick of a control, I jammed our tethers into the other vessel’s.

  Anguish was still clambering to his feet when the other vessel jerked hard against our tethers, knocking us both down again. The lights flickered ominously, and our ship continued to rock. Anguish crawled over to a nearby security console and retrieved the emergency rifles we’d need for our invasion. I clawed my way back to the central console and jammed our boarding artery against theirs.

  When we emerged onto their ship through the boarding artery, the mere sight of Anguish sent the crewmen fleeing. Pulse rifles in hand, we stalked through the corridors, waiting for resistance they did not mount.

  At last we came upon a small group that hurled down its pistols at the sight of us. I’d donned a hood, not needing the questions about who I truly was.

  “Who’s in charge
?” I demanded.

  “I’m the captain. Please,” said an older man. “We’re just transporting medicines to Eurydice—”

  “I don’t care about your cargo,” I snapped. “Is this vessel still functional? Can it enter hyperspace?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then we’re trading ships. Get off.”

  My words silenced them.

  “Go,” I said, pointing toward the boarding artery. “Take the Retribution.”

  The captain opened and closed his mouth, sending an astonished look out the nearest window at the imposing Grandiloquy vessel. He had to think I was mad.

  “Take your goods with you,” I added. And then, because the whole lot of them seemed dumbstruck and bewildered, I raised my voice: “Do as I say or I will shoot you all and give you nothing!”

  The captain hastened into action, barking orders for his crew to move their cargo. He kept his eyes on me warily as his crew began to file past.

  “All… all respect intended, uh, Grandeé…”

  He settled on the title with obvious uncertainty, guided no doubt by our Grandiloquy accents and the magnificence of the Retribution.

  “Yes?” I prompted.

  “This… this is not exactly an equitable trade—”

  “I am forcing you at weapon’s point. It isn’t meant to be equitable.”

  “For… for you,” he said. “That vessel is surely worth hundreds of this one. Is there some defect I need to know about in advance? Just for the safety of my people—”

  “I assure you, the vessel is every bit as fine as it appears, and…” My voice faded as I spied the first crate of goods being levitated past me.

  I whipped forward and halted its momentum with my palm. The diagram on its surface depicted elegant phials tucked within. I seized the lid and shoved it open, and within were portions of dark red liquid. They were unmistakable, but still my mind insisted that my eyes were mistaken. I lifted one of the crystalline containers. No label indicated the nature of its contents. These could be simple blood products—but how many times had I seen such things displayed on the luxury shelves across the Empire?