The Nemesis

by S. J. Kincaid

  His believers were the very men and women who formed the backbone of this Empire. They were its enforcers, and now they enforced his false divinity. Tyrus had hoped that this lie—bald, brazen, and self-evidently wrong to those who used their minds rather than relying on others for their opinions—would undermine the authority of anyone who repeated it.

  It would. It had. No one looking at these people from the outside could believe in anything they said anymore. They’d spent their credibility.

  My misery would crush me. “You fool,” I muttered. Anger, fury, was so much easier than grief. “You sun-scorned fool.” Why hadn’t he trusted me? Why hadn’t he found a way to tell me?

  I had killed him. He had saved me, and I had murdered him.

  “There will be a reaction, of course. It will take time for the backlash against this lie—and all who repeat it—to grow, to take shape and gain power,” he was saying, but I could no longer watch him. I felt as though I were being flayed from within, coming apart in bloodied shreds. I laid my forehead on my knees, but the darkness offered no comfort. His voice was still addressing me.

  “If you are watching this, I don’t know how far I progressed into the charade. But that is where you come in.”

  My every muscle tensed.

  I had wondered what my purpose might be.

  He was about to suggest one.

  “I wanted more time with you, so I could lead you into a better understanding of this Empire before making you my enemy. But once you declared that you’d destroyed the Sacred City, that you’d killed the Interdict, I had to act. I had to sever your faith in me with a single violent act. Nemesis, please believe me…”

  The pause went on so long that I finally, against my will, looked up.

  He made no effort to conceal his agony. He looked like a man beholding his own grave.

  “That was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life,” he said quietly. “I would sooner die than do it again.”

  Pain rocked through me, my eyes blurring.

  This could not be true. This could not be. I wouldn’t accept it.

  But even as I rejected his claims, my mind was piecing together his actions.

  He’d driven his sword through me.

  He’d ensured that I survived and was delivered to Neveni’s vessel.

  He’d saved my life on Corcyra. Then he hunted me down, in order to…

  To taunt me for not rising up to fight him. For I had not played my part, and so he had tried to goad me into it: My love, you needn’t bother shutting your ears to the despair of the Excess after tomorrow. Those voices screaming, “Nemesis lives” will at last go silent forevermore.

  And now, all at once, I could imagine a different interpretation of our every interaction. He’d captured me and then ensured that cooperating with him would seem intolerable.

  He’d intended for me to be his enemy.

  And now, from beyond the grave, he was asking me to become his ally once more.

  “When people begin to question this lie,” he was saying, “several things will probably happen: those who believe it—or claim to—will become increasingly frenzied and irrational in their defense of it. They will see an attack upon their belief as an attack upon their stature, their influence, their credibility. To admit they were wrong will seem unthinkable. The more glaringly obvious the lie becomes, the more desperate their conviction will become—and they will go to intolerable lengths to prove themselves right.”

  I could barely focus on his words. This holographic might be the last true view of him—Tyrus in all his honesty, stripped of the Divine Emperor persona—that I ever had. I studied the curve of his mouth, the straight, bold line of his nose. I imagined touching him. What I would say, if we met again.

  You should have told me, Tyrus. You should have told me!

  “The backlash against the lie will swell entirely on its own, but here’s the difficult part: even if doubts stir, most will not dare to voice them.”

  His conviction, the sober intensity of his explanation, broke my heart. How carefully he’d laid this plan. But I’d been right. His one mistake had been to love me too well.

  “Even as the people of this Empire learn to doubt me, to doubt every established institution that supports me, and every prominent figure that follows me, there will be consequences to pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes. For that reason, few will dare. Someone must step forward to inspire the doubters to act and speak their thoughts aloud, rather than remain silent and complicit.”

  “A fine point.” I spoke roughly, unshed tears in my voice. This was the last time I’d have a chance to speak to the real Tyrus. What matter if he could not reply?

  “That is the most monumental task,” Tyrus told the imager. “It requires rejecting half a millennium of complacency and obedience. The first voices to question my lie will be silenced and punished. What happens to them will terrify others into silence… unless there is a figurehead too strong to destroy, and prominent enough to weather the consequences of speaking the truth. There must be a symbol of strength to serve as an example to others. Nemesis, it has to be you.”

  “Me,” I whispered.

  “You,” he repeated, as though he’d heard me, and my heart gave a quick stab of surprise. “I would not have chosen to send you to Sagnau, but everything moved too quickly—I have no alternative. If all goes to plan, this will succeed and you will never see this holographic and you will never need to know this.”

  He paused, and his expression gentled, his mouth softening. “My love. I would ask no one else—would trust no one else. But if anyone can overthrow this Empire, it is you. I am dead, but this can still be done: lead an uprising. The Empire will be primed and ready to fall to your onslaught. Whatever has happened between now”—he gestured to himself and then to me—“and the time you finally watch this, I can assure you: the Empire is weaker. I’ll spend the time ahead ruinously depleting the treasury, empowering the most venal of public officials and removing the most competent of them. I’ll cripple any social or structural support that keeps this Empire intact and powerful, so it should be ready to fall. I beg of you: finish this, or it will all be for nothing. Free this galaxy, Nemesis, and let the Excess reclaim the liberty my ancestors stole from them.”

  I stared numbly at his face. From the very start, he’d been manipulating me, positioning me to become his opponent.

  But it had gone wrong. I had been a deadlier enemy than he anticipated, and so Tyrus was dead.

  “I know you must be furious with me. You’ve every right to be.”

  “Yes,” I said softly.

  “Nemesis, I could not share the truth of this with you. If you’d known, you would never have cooperated. You would never have risen against me—and that’s what I most need of you. I need an enemy.”

  A hard fist of anger contracted in my chest. He’d used me. He’d been using me all this time.

  “Time runs short,” Tyrus said, “so I must tell you that there’s another element to this plan: I mean to create malignant space, to spread it openly. With the cure to it in hand, I feel this is a calculated risk, one that will hasten the backlash against me. If I am dead…” He hesitated. “If I am dead,” he repeated deliberately, “then that malignant space needs to be fixed. On this data chip, I give you the cure. I’ve left it in many other locations, just in case, but this is for you. Enclosed you’ll find schematics for the creation of a synthesizer that will heal whatever damage I’ve inflicted. You can use this to your advantage: it can be wielded to gather support from the Excess. Spread it. Share it. Don’t let it be lost.”

  As if his life meant nothing. As if the greater game were all that mattered. As if my grief meant nothing—as if, so long as I saw his scheme to fruition, all the loss would be worth the reward.

  “Damn you, Tyrus!” I shouted at his image.

  He rubbed his palms over his face, like he was trying to fight back a migraine. “And Nemesis,” he said wearily, “I obviousl
y do not know how I perished, but I need you to know that if I died by your hand—”

  I flinched.

  His hands dropped, and his earnest eyes seemed to bore into mine across space and time.

  “You did the right thing,” he said. “The timing is not what I planned—but you did exactly the right thing. I know I must have been cruel to you. Perhaps I convinced you that I hated you, but Nemesis, know this: I loved you to my final breath.” Tears shimmered in his eyes. “I would have desired nothing more than a life with you, but we were not fated to be.”

  The words knifed me, and my eyes blurred with tears, for I was seeing him once again before that blast of light, shoving me back so he might take it all himself, and, oh…

  “I hate you,” I snarled at him.

  I slapped my hand out and cut off the holographic projector, a scream of blind fury tearing from my throat.

  “I HATE YOU!”

  How could he do this to me? How could he put me in this position, of knowing I had killed him and it was him all along? It was the real Tyrus all along!

  Those eyes, those fixed and staring eyes, they had been his. The concern he’d shown, his tears, the love he’d confessed—all real.

  I screamed again. I slammed my fist against the window and felt my knuckles split open. I kicked the wall and the bones in my foot cracked and split.

  Wounded, gasping, I sank once more to the floor.

  And now what? Now what?

  “Damn you,” I whispered. “My love. Damn you.”

  Now I would save the galaxy for him.

  37

  I CHARGED down the boarding artery leading to the Alexandria, restored by med bots, powered by an anger that rivaled the power of a supernova.

  I loved you to my final breath, he’d said.

  But he hadn’t needed to die. He could have been here right now, beside me. All he’d needed to do was tell me the truth. We could have made this happen together.

  If I died by your hand, please know that it was the right thing to do.

  How generous of him! What gifts he had left behind for me! The guilt of his death, the useless weight of my love, his sun-scorned forgiveness for it! And a plan that only I could carry out.

  Or maybe, even from the grave, he was lying.

  Both possibilities enraged me, and rage made a better medicine than any bot could administer. It burned out my grief, roared too loudly to accommodate thoughts.

  I passed into the Alexandria, ignoring the startled Partisans who saluted me, heading directly toward the first computer console I could find.

  There was an easy way to determine whether he’d lied on that holographic. No would-be liberator would have killed all those people on the Halcyon just to remind me he needed to die.

  I activated the computer console in the Alexandria’s launch bay. Though the major systems would permit no access without Tyrus’s authorization code, I easily accessed the vessel’s surveillance archives.

  Yet when I watched the footage of the destruction of the Halcyon, I could not make sense of it. I could not.

  Because the Alexandria’s own surveillance showed nothing of the destruction Anguish and I had witnessed immediately after we’d escaped, and before anyone could evacuate. Rather, it depicted an evacuation, slow and carefully orchestrated.

  I forwarded the footage. The evacuation continued. Hours passed.

  The record captured the power core overloading and blasting open the cityship—but not until after the last passengers had disembarked.

  I recognized this version from galactic media broadcasts. We’d dismissed it as manufactured propaganda.

  “Lies,” I whispered, watching the footage again at low speed, looking for any signs of editing or splicing.

  But there were none.

  My hand slackened on the console as I suddenly understood.

  Anguish and I watched the Halcyon destroyed through the screen on the Retribution—a vessel that Tyrus had given to me, with systems he’d controlled completely.

  He’d rigged the footage, all right—the footage he’d shown us.

  I gritted my teeth hard as I turned away from the console. Another lie! And I’d swallowed it wholesale, falling enthusiastically into the role Tyrus had crafted for me.

  He’d been telling the truth. His thinking had not been clouded by Venalox. His every action had been guided by a greater aim—the liberation of the Empire. It was the same sun-scorned goal he’d had the day I met him.

  And he was dead by my hand.

  He’d manipulated me. Deceived me. Used me. I would not let myself think about anything but that. If he were still alive, I’d kill him all over again! The cruel, despicable, evil bastard—

  “Hey! What are you doing here?”

  Neveni’s startled voice called me back to the moment.

  Whatever she saw in my face put wariness into hers. Her hand drifted toward the weapon in her belt, and then she thought better of it, and her palm drifted to her side.

  I saw no need to explain. Let her put my odd manner down to grief. “It’s not your concern.”

  “Were you looking for me? I was just heading back to the Arbiter.” She took my arm to lead me away. When I yanked free of her guiding hand, she said, “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I’ll go when I damn well please.”

  Her face hardened. “Nemesis, we are working on this ship. You need to leave. If I must, I’ll have an escort take you back.”

  Gone, her jubilation at our victory. Whatever had occupied her on this vessel did not agree with her. “What are you doing here?”

  A muscle flexed in her jaw. “Supervising repairs.”

  “What repairs? Did one of your Partisans decide to fire up the engine inside the gale?”

  She shrugged. “Stupid. He’s been demoted.”

  “Why waste time on repairing it?” I asked. “You won’t be flying this vessel without the command codes.”

  She opened her mouth, then shut it. An odd reaction. As my eyes narrowed, she spoke abruptly: “We have hackers. We’ll get those codes.”

  “The command codes?” I barked a laugh. “Are you joking? You can’t hack your way into the system. Without Tyrus, you’ll never…” A bizarre thought stopped my voice.

  She had found me in time for me to be healed. But I hadn’t been alone in that room.

  She cocked her head, eyeing me. “Go on,” she said sharply.

  She’d had time to heal me. She’d had medical bots on hand… for me.

  But…

  But she hadn’t used them on Tyrus? The medical bots could have started his heart, could have healed him just enough so he was still helpless—and at her mercy, with all the important intelligence in his mind there for the taking.… She hadn’t bothered to do that?

  How wouldn’t Neveni think of that?

  She had to have realized straightaway the power of holding the Alexandria. She had to have realized the only way to seize it was to force those command codes out of Tyrus.

  Yet she didn’t spare a medical bot for him?

  As she waited for my reply, her hand drifted again toward her weapon.

  “Without Tyrus, you’ll never manage it.” Somehow I sounded indifferent. Calm.

  Neveni wished me to believe she’d disposed of Tyrus’s body so hastily. That she’d given him the privilege of a Helionic burial rather than just casting the corpse out an airlock.

  And Anguish had let her do it.

  He wouldn’t have let her do that. Anguish knew me better than that. He knew what it would mean to me, to see the body. He cared too much for me to do that, unless…

  Unless…

  “Our hackers are excellent,” Neveni was saying with a shrug. “Given time, they can crack anything. Now, come, let’s get back to the Arbiter.”

  She desperately wanted me off this ship. She was hiding something here—from me.

  My heart was racing now, sweat prickling over my skin. What if…

  I dared not belie
ve it. I dared not ask her, either. She was lying about something, but confronting her would yield no answers: Neveni never backed down.

  “All right,” I said with deathly calm. I turned as if to leave, and Neveni fell into step behind me.

  My elbow slammed her face. She staggered backward. My follow-up punch knocked her out cold.

  Whatever the plot, I had to assume that Anguish was part of it.

  I leaned down and slid her weapon out of her belt. Then I seized her wrist and spoke into her transmitter.

  “Anguish: come meet me in Tyrus’s study on the Alexandria. I’d like to talk to you.”

  * * *

  Anguish reached me within minutes.

  When he stepped into the study, his eyes drifted first to the antique hearth, which crackled with the flames set to flare to life whenever someone was in this chamber. Then he looked back to me—and the weapon I aimed squarely at Neveni’s forehead. She lay sprawled over the desk, unconscious.

  “No,” he said.

  “Yes. You will tell me,” I said ferociously. “Where is Tyrus?”

  “Dead.”

  “Try again,” I snarled. “You need his authorization codes to gain control of this ship! He’s alive somewhere on this ship. Tell me his location, or I kill her.”

  “Nemesis,” he said, drawing toward me.

  “Not a step,” I hissed at him. “You healed me. But I’ll wager you healed him first. Or she did. You—you might have chosen me. But she—she knew whose brain would prove more valuable.”

  “You are distressed. You are grieving.”

  A wild laugh escaped me. “Last chance, Anguish. And I promise you, there’ll be no time for healing bots.”

  His dark eyes narrowed. “You will not kill her. That’s absurd.”

  “I killed Tyrus!” I roared. “You think this won’t be easier?”

  Frustration contorted his features. “Why? Why do you demand to see him? Nothing has changed. He is an enemy!”

  Is. Not was.