“Liar,” muttered Neveni.
“Imagine how many resources we would have wasted, had we needed to deal with every resistance against us. But my family never feared protests—not even the most civilized and compelling. Because we knew the Partisans would destroy them for us.”
Neveni looked at me incredulously. “Does he seriously imagine he can shake me with this nonsense?” she whispered.
I opened my mouth, then thought better of answering. Neveni would not like to hear it, but Tyrus was no longer taunting her. I recognized that new note in his voice. He believed he was speaking the truth.
“Your Partisans join peaceful movements—and subvert them,” he said. “As the people call for justice, you set the city alight around them. Your violence becomes the only story, the only protest that others remember. And the silent Excess who might have joined the calls for justice… they look at the destruction and decide they want no part of it.” His laughter was soft, laced with acid. “You kill revolutions, you Partisans. And yet you call yourselves champions of the people!”
Neveni took a deep breath and said into the radio: “If you’re done—”
“Do you have any idea how many you killed that day on Corcyra? Do you know the death toll at the Sacred City?”
Neveni stared mutely at the view screen.
“Your victims were not playing our games of power. They were innocent people. Have you dared ask yourself if anyone deserved your brand of ‘justice’? I’ve no doubt you’ve rationalized all that collateral damage somehow.”
Neveni’s silence began to alarm me. I stepped up to her. “Don’t let him get to you. He has no right to talk.” Tyrus had committed more than his share of atrocities.
Neveni seemed to gather herself. Again, she activated the radio. “Get to the point.”
“The point: I have no interest in negotiating with an irrational idiot blinded by hatred. I would say this even had I not seen your vile cruelties to Nemesis. These are my terms: return Nemesis to me. Alive. Immediately. You will all surrender. In return, I give you your lives. If you fail to comply, I will destroy every single ship in your fleet but the Arbiter.”
Neveni laughed with disbelief. The Partisans were smiling at his audacity as well. She crowed back into the radio, “You don’t have the firepower for that! Unless you plan to lay siege to us for weeks while you build up your projectiles—while we continue to do as we like with Nemesis. Don’t you get it, Your Supreme Reverence?” She spat that title, pointedly leaving out the “Divine.” “We outgun you!”
But before he could have had a chance to receive those words, he spoke again:
“You no doubt think I lack projectile weapons.”
“Of course he does. He needs time to synthesize more, and what else does he have? He can’t use malignant space,” Neveni said, half to herself. “He’d destroy the Arbiter, too.”
“Happily, my drones told me the orbit of every single vessel in your fleet. I can calculate their positions to a fraction of a millisecond. I can hit every last one of you.”
“With what?” snarled Neveni. She turned to face her crew. “He doesn’t have any firepower that can reach us here.” The mounting unease on their faces made her swear. “I tell you, he’s bluffing.”
“Rest assured, Sagnau, I can reach you. Let me demonstrate.”
And then a Partisan cried out, calling our attention to the view screen just as an asteroid tore out of the gale of vivid clouds. At first its path seemed random—but as it careened past us, its trajectory became plain. Gasps split the air.
The asteroid slammed into a small Partisan vessel, ramming through its hull. Debris spilled into space.
“Stars. He’s weaponized the asteroid field,” Anguish breathed.
“No,” Neveni said. “No, it’s not possib—”
She choked off her words as two more asteroids flew past. As though steered by the hand of the Living Cosmos, they slammed directly into the wounded flank of the Partisan vessel.
A moan passed through the command nexus.
The vessel exploded.
“As you see, I have my own projectiles to propel your way. Those are but three of them,” Tyrus said coldly. “And I have five-hundred million more. Surrender Nemesis to me now, or I swear on all the stars, I’ll slaughter every last one of you.”
32
“SURRENDER to him.”
Neveni snapped out of her stupor and whirled on me. “What?”
“Surrender,” I said in a low voice. “You can’t win this.”
“Are you insane?”
“Evacuate the Arbiter. Let me go to him. I have a plan.”
She tore across the distance between us, suspicion flaring in her eyes. “You have a plan? This was your plan!”
I had not looked forward to this moment. But I refused to show my regret. It would not matter to her. “This was the first part of my plan,” I said impassively. “And so far, it has gone exactly as I hoped.”
Realization flashed over her face—followed instantly by rage. With a bloodcurdling howl, she threw herself at me.
I twisted to unbalance her, and threw her to the ground behind me. Her hand flashed up with a weapon, but I’d already drawn mine. I aimed at her head.
For a moment, we froze in a strange tableau, her eyes wild with anger and betrayal, our weapons drawn—mutual destruction a single finger’s twitch away.
“You knew,” Neveni said in a guttural voice. “You meant this to happen!”
“For him to overcome you?” I kept her trained in my sights. “Yes. It had to seem convincing.”
“Convincing? You liar, you soulless sun-scorned traitor!” Her gaze flicked past me to her fellow Partisans. “Shoot her!”
“Wait!” Anguish stepped up behind Neveni, his weapon pressed to her skull. “Anyone shoots, and she dies,” he said to the Partisans.
Startled gratitude coursed through me. I had not told Anguish of my true plan. But he trusted me, regardless. He trusted me enough to take my side, blindly, against the woman he’d loved.
I gave him a brief look of gratitude. He nodded curtly in reply.
I leaned down, and Neveni adjusted her weapon so it shoved into the tender underside of my chin. I jammed mine into her belly and leaned forward to speak into her ear. “He was always going to win,” I told her. “He’d outwit us, outgun us. Would you have agreed to come here if you’d known that was the only possible outcome? But this way, we still have a chance. He will think that he’s truly rescued me—”
“This is his victory! You sold us all out—”
“I AM GOING TO KILL HIM!”
A nervous twitch from Anguish suggested that the Partisans at my back were losing patience. But she had to be made to understand.
“I’ve done the very same thing that you and I did to Gladdic,” I said. “And it will work. I swear to you, Neveni, it will work. I swear on my soul that by the time this is over, he will be dead!”
Panting, Neveni pulled away to search my face, her study frantic, as though with enough effort, she might uncover some hidden mark, some sign that belied my words. Her weapon still pressed into my chin. Mine dug into her abdomen.
“What?” she said roughly. “What’s next in this plan?”
On a deep breath, I took the greatest risk of my life.
I pulled my weapon away from her and threw it away to one side. She had the upper hand at last. “I’ll tell you,” I said. “And you’ll help me make it happen.”
* * *
“Have you lost your wits?” roared one of the Partisan subleaders.
The other vessels had not reacted favorably to Neveni’s flashed order: to power up engines and escape the chaotic gale. They knew that meant they’d be flushed out of hiding and emerge crippled before Tyrus’s waiting armada.
Several of the other subleaders had seen the hologram and cobbled together radios to rage at Neveni directly.
“I need you to listen to me, Galahan,” Neveni spoke tonelessly, her
face ashen.
She’d accepted that my plan was our only hope now. She didn’t like it—or me. She could barely meet my eyes, and her tightly knotted fists betrayed the rage she was holding in as she addressed the other ship.
“Don’t use my name, you little idiot,” raged Galahan. “You think the Empire can’t hear us?”
“I’ve no doubt the Emperor hears every word.” Neveni cast a bitter glare my way.
“You’re going to send us all to our deaths!”
“We have to surrender,” she said. “We’ll stand a chance of surviving if we cooperate. If we don’t, he’ll kill us all.” She couldn’t share what we had planned, not without Tyrus overhearing. I knew it was maddening for her.
“Like hell I’m going to stand down. You’ve led us to our doom!”
Galahan cut off communication. At my urging, Neveni contacted other commanders in the fleet. But they were torn. We watched on the view screen as other ships flashed messages to one another, debating what to do. An hour passed, then another.
Time ran out.
More asteroids blasted through the clouds—a shower of them, more than two hundred. Cries erupted through our command nexus as we watched the asteroids barrel toward Galahan’s vessel. Tyrus had indeed been listening. He knew precisely whom to target.
Galahan’s crew vented plasma to give themselves a push, but it did not work. “You fool, you fool,” Neveni was muttering, her eyes bright with unshed tears, when at last they fired up their engines—too late.
Galahan’s vessel coasted directly into the path of a smaller asteroid that tore straight through its hull. A larger asteroid followed, and the next impact dealt a fatal blow. The vessel ruptured into a bright flower of fire and debris before arcing down to burn in the planet’s atmosphere.
Neveni’s jaw hardened. In a lifeless voice, she said, “Flash the message again: ‘Power up and escape.’ The smart ones will obey.”
* * *
Just outside the main power core, I curled into a crumpled ball to wait. My breath heaved against my upper arm, which was sticky with blood.
Tyrus would expect to see a torture victim. This time, Neveni had required no persuasion to make sure I looked the part. Knowing that I’d sacrificed her ship, her entire cause, for a plan that might not work, she’d enlisted her Partisans’ assistance in beating me to a pulp.
She’d enjoyed it, and I could not blame her. Her rage at me must have felt boundless.
As I waited now, swallowing moans against the pain, I kept my eyes fixed on the single, narrow window above me. Through it, I saw the glint of the Partisan escape pods streaming out of the Arbiter’s bay, carrying all the crew but me.
They would not make it far. Only a half hour ago, the Arbiter had been towed by two other Partisan vessels to the very edge of the gale. Both of those ships had damaged themselves by igniting their engines in the gale, but they’d preserved the Arbiter from enduring the same power discharge. Through the window, I’d glimpsed the fate of that portion of the fleet that had exited before us.… Tyrus’s remaining security drones, those not wasted on the bait charge he’d sent into the gale, had converged around the crippled Partisan ships and trapped them in virtual cages of metal, hundreds of weapons aimed at each.
Now I watched as the escape pods were also surrounded and trapped by these drones.
How Neveni must be cursing me. She’d spoken no words of farewell as she personally delivered the last blow, but tears had been running freely down her face.
“It will work,” I’d managed to gasp.
With a snarl, she’d turned and stalked away.
It will work, I told myself now. But the sight of those bots encircling the Partisan fleet sent a chill through me.
What a coup for Tyrus, to apprehend the bulk of the Partisan firepower in a single day.
The victory will blind him. It will make him careless.
So I told myself.
My eyes blurred, cheeks throbbing from the impact of Partisan boot heels. I blinked hard and saw a new shape cutting through the thin sheen of clouds at the edge of the chaotic gale.
The Alexandria had entered the outermost reach of the gale.
The Arbiter jostled as tethers clamped into place. Now came a long pause as the vessel rumbled with the contact.… Tyrus would be scanning for traps.
He would detect none. There were no explosives primed to erupt, no engine core powering up to self-destruct. Nothing waited to kill him.
Nothing but me.
I heard distant footsteps, the first of his servants entering the ship, their boots thudding down the hallway. A low hum droned through the air as his security bots buzzed down the corridor. I finally permitted myself to moan. Between the scarring and my new beating, I not only looked the part, I felt it.
When the first bots swerved into sight, I stared wildly into their lenses. They could only glimpse me, could only steer about here within the chaotic gale. They could not fire stunners without destroying themselves, so I could afford to give Tyrus, on the Alexandria, a long look at me through their recorders.
With a bestial shriek, I staggered to my feet. “Get away. Get away from me!”
Gripping the wall for support, I limped through a doorway into the power core’s antechamber. A pair of the security bots followed. When they came to hover over me, I hurled myself down to the floor, throwing my hands over my head, wailing like a terrified child.
“Get away, GET AWAY!”
Curiously, as though I were truly afraid, my eyes welled up. It was adrenaline that made me begin to shake, I was certain.
This had to work. It had to.
When the servants found me, I escaped once more with a panicked cry. I passed into the next room, where the power core throbbed and pulsed, and found a new spot beneath it to huddle into myself. With each breath, I choked on what I hoped seemed to be sobs—not difficult, when the Partisans had cracked my ribs.
If I was shaking even harder now—if the shaking was not entirely within my control—all the better. Tyrus thought I’d spent the last month being tortured. Anyone would shake, in such circumstances.
Make a show. Keep him focused on you. Otherwise he might think to destroy the Partisan vessels before he came to deal with me.
The servants did not follow me into this innermost chamber. Two security bots quietly slipped through the doorway, but they kept their distance.
Then I heard footsteps in the doorway.
He’d come at last.
It was Tyrus.
33
“NEMESIS.”
I ducked my head and didn’t look at him. “Stay away from me.” My voice wavered. It sounded weak, beaten.
His voice was soft. “Nemesis, it’s all right. You’re safe now.”
I chanced a glimpse at him from beneath my arm and saw that he held no weapons. His bare hands were outstretched toward me. And his face…
Shock jolted through me. He no longer looked like Tarantis. He looked like himself again… that cleft in his chin, the faint dusting of freckles, the coppery hair disordered over his fine-boned face. His pale blue eyes looked shadowed by exhaustion and stress, as though it devastated him to see me in this state.
“Don’t touch me.” The alarm in my voice was real. I took a sharp, pained breath. How clever he was, what a diabolical monster, to approach me unmasked, unarmed. “Stay back.”
“I won’t hurt you. I swear, I…” Hands still upraised, fingers spread, he took one cautious step toward me, then another, never taking his gaze from me.
But I saw the swift calculations behind that gaze. The security bots overhead rocked slightly, wavering in response to his internal debate.
Our eyes met.
His face crumpled. “Oh, my love… don’t weep.”
I touched my cheek—felt the tears trickling there once more.
Grief suddenly coursed through me—grief too deep to be born of this moment. It felt endless, bruising, raw.
I realized I had been
grieving for days now. Weeks and months.
This was the only way it could end.
He wore a face I had loved so well.
He misunderstood my tears. “It will be all right now,” he said tenderly. “Nemesis, I am here to save you from them. Look, let me help you.…”
“Stay back.” My raw, quiet voice halted his forward advance.
“I cannot imagine what’s been done to you.” His words came out thickly, strangled. “Let me help you. I have doctors, medical bots.…”
Any way but this. Open battle, hurled curses, his sword again through my chest—I would have preferred fury and open hatred, I would have chosen any other ending than this one. The tears shimmering in his eyes were teaching me a lesson I did not want to learn. I had wondered if what he felt for me was love or obsession, but I saw now that the two were not as different as I’d wanted to believe.
I saw love on his face. It was real. A villain could love. He loved me.
But love was no reason, no justification, no excuse.
“STAY BACK!” I shrieked, and cringed into the computer panel below the power core.
I saw some new resolution clarify in him, firming his mouth, clearing the frown from his brow.
“I can help you. Nemesis, I…” He paused again. “I hate to do this, but… I’ve been assured this will not harm you, even within the gale. So I must.”
The neural suppressor hummed back to life in me.
I loosed a shuddering sigh. “Don’t,” I said. Thank you, I thought. This face he wore now, his original face, was only another kind of mask. I could have asked for no better reminder than the weakness flooding through me, the sapping of my will and agency. A villain’s love was no love worth having.
“I’m sorry,” he said raggedly. “I know how I’ve hurt you, Nemesis. I abhor all I have done to you. I abhor that I must do this now.”
But activating the neural suppressor gave him the confidence to cross the last few steps to me. His security bots had scanned me and detected no weapons, nothing that could be used to kill him. The weakness in my muscles now was the final moment of disarmament.
The Nemesis Page 21