Imperatrix of the Galaxy

by Tristan Vick

  The truth was, she hadn’t planned for it to go down like this. But the emperor had swooped in and pressed the matter. She was caught off guard and had no good plan in place. Now, all she could do was offer up Danica as a scapegoat.

  “Vice Admiral,” Emperor Dakroth sneered, the right-side of his lip knotting tightly in disgust. “It’s been too long.”

  Before Danica could react, Ishtar raised a slender black stun-gun with a burnt chrome finish. “Please, don’t.”

  Danica paused, looking between Lianica and Dakroth’s faces. She lunged at the emperor; there was a blast, and Ishtar zapped Danica, preventing her from laying hands on the Lord Emperor.

  The stun bolt solicited a grunt and Danica crumpled to the ground and spasmed as the electric shock dropped her like a lead weight. Lingering tendrils of blue electricity crawled through her muscle sinews and caused her body to twitch uncontrollably.

  Prostrate before the Lord Emperor, his assassin, and her back-stabbing ex-girlfriend, who all stood above her with condescending looks, silently judging her, caused Danica to feel a burning rage ignite inside her. Unable to move, though, all she could do was scream out in frustration.

  “Excellent work, Captain Blackstar Van Scarion,” Dakroth said, clearly pleased. He nodded at Ishtar, who took the stun-gun from Lianica and stowed it. Smirking, Ishtar helped Lianica pick Danica up by her arms and dragged her limp body out of the lab, down the corridor, and back to Dakroth’s shuttle.

  Lianica had never felt more conflicted in her life. Although it was true that she and Danica had started off as rivals, she liked to think they’d moved passed that. Over the course of the past couple of weeks, she’d gotten to know Danica well enough to know that this level of betrayal wasn’t something she’d likely forgive. And, yet, if Lianica didn’t do it, it wouldn’t take a clairvoyant to know what Dakroth would do if she went against the Lord Emperor’s wishes.

  Once they had finished boarding, Lianica turned to leave when Dakroth’s blue hand landed upon her chest, stopping her. She was startled by the sudden contact; surprise became trepidation when he didn’t remove his hand, but let it linger there.

  “I’m glad to have such a loyal officer as you on my side, Lianica. But, if I should ever find you harboring an enemy of the Empire aboard this ship again, I won’t be so forgiving the next time. Are we clear?”

  Lianica gulped. She could already feel him projecting his fear-based telepathy her way. She tried to ignore it; it wasn’t the first time she had experienced his little mind games. But it was still unnerving. “Yes, my lord,” she answered timidly, her voice cracking.

  His hand slowly slid inside the flap of her uniform and crept down her left breast until he was cupping it firmly in his palm. Giving her a gentle squeeze, his thumb massaging her nipple, he leaned in to her so that his lips hovered dangerously close to hers. “Do we have an understanding, Lianica?”

  Lianica grabbed Dakroth by his neck and reeled him in. Their lips crashed together and she kissed him long and hard. At the same time, she grabbed his probing hand with hers and forced him to squeeze her breast even tighter. She had to make her submission look genuine, which meant she needed to hold back her gag reflex long enough to convince him she wanted his grubby hands all over her. This was the only way to ensure him of her sincerity. Her loyalty.

  Finally, she relinquished her grip and, taking a deep breath, answered, “We have an understanding, your excellency.”

  “Good,” he said, a crooked grin betraying the fact that he was secretly delighted by her acquiescence.

  It was almost as though he’d expected her to resist him. But why? she wondered. Was it a test of loyalty? Lianica swallowed hard. Could he somehow know that she was part of the Pe’tharell, an ancient order devoted to the protection of the empress above all else? Could he possibly suspect that she’d die for the empress, even if it meant going against him?

  In the end, she hadn’t any other choice. If she hadn’t given Danica up, Dakroth would have suspected something. He would have dug into her past until he uncovered the fact that she was a Pe’tharell, and he would have imprisoned her, or worse. At least for now, she had convinced him she was on his side. Even if it had meant destroying an ally’s trust, a person who she cared for a great deal.

  With their business concluded, Lord Emperor Dakroth beamed at her with his trademark debonair grin and watched her stroll down the shuttle’s loading ramp. He admired the way her hips swiveled and how tight her ass looked in the white uniform. Perhaps the kiss had excited him more than he’d anticipated. Licking his lips, taking in her lingering flavor, he smiled and turned back into the shuttle.

  Not knowing what else to do, Lianica found herself back in the astrometrics lab. Without warning, she began to hyperventilate and collapsed to the floor. Her hands trembling, she clutched the edge of the holographic display table, the same table she’d almost had Danica on earlier. She bowed her head between her arms and began sobbing.

  “What have I done?” she whispered between gasps of air. Sniffling, a steady stream of tears ran down both her violet cheeks. Shaking her head, she rose to her feet and, slamming her fists on the holographic display table, she let out a gut-wrenching scream. Even if, by some miracle, Danica could one day come to forgive her, the fact was Lianica wouldn’t ever be able to forgive herself.

  Angered by her own lack of resolve, her betrayal of Danica, and her utter failure to protect her girlfriend, Lianica tore the brass bars off her uniform and threw them across the room. They pinged off the surface of the wall and fell to the floor. Leaving them, she stormed out of the astrometrics lab and headed to the recreational lounge to hit up the bar and have a few drinks.

  Maybe if I get drunk enough, she thought, she could forget about this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

  12

  Back aboard his private shuttle, Emperor Dakroth shackled Danica’s arms above her head, fastening them to the rear bulkhead with magnetic clamps. Opening a vial of smelling salts, he wafted its potent scent beneath her nose and revived her.

  Danica snapped awake, the inside of her nose burning, and found herself shackled to the back of the emperor’s shuttle transport with unbreakable korridium alloy restraints. The same restraints used for transporting slave labor to the Outer Rim mining asteroids and for the extraterrestrial chattel bought and sold by the Intergalactic Gladiatorial Syndicate.

  “Dani, is it?” Dakroth said in an amused tone. A slight smile formed on his Prussian lips as he eyed his former Vice Admiral up and down, taking in her new, augmented appearance.

  “Only Jegra calls me that,” she snapped defensively. Her words had a sharper edge than she had intended, but her new name and persona was part and parcel of her attempt to redefine herself. To distance herself from the emperor and become something different. Something better.

  Even so, it seemed her abrupt tone caught his attention because his eyes widened and his grin grew strained, as if the ire was bubbling up inside him but, then, he quickly forced it back again and found composure.

  “I think I preferred Cassera, actually.” He locked his hands behind his back and smiled again. This time, his gaze drifted off to the side as though some nostalgic reminiscence from their past caught his attention.

  “Cassera is dead,” she replied.

  “Good,” Dakroth replied. “Because Cassera Van Danica Amelorak is a traitor to the empire. And as you well know, there’s only one fate for traitors.”

  Danica merely gazed back at him with a blasé look that seemed to say she’d heard it all before. Nothing he could say would shock her. She knew him too well; she could tell exactly how all this would pan out.

  But, if she was being completely honest, being called a traitor to her face did sting. She was many things, but a traitor wasn’t one of them.

  Ever since she was a young girl all she wanted to do was serve a greater purpose. The greater purpose she’d found was expanding the empire, securing the future, and making Dagon gre
at again. That’s why she joined the Imperial Navy. She wanted to be a part of something bigger than herself. She wanted to make a difference.

  Then, one day, the Lord Emperor took notice of her and, for reasons unfathomable to her, decided to prime her for admiralship. And he took her under his wing and began her training. The unimaginable had happened, and she was caught up in the great expanse of the Dagon Empire. He was her noble leader and she his dutiful servant. Fulfilling the Emperor’s every command was her sole purpose in life.

  Dakroth’s vision of a unified galaxy became her vision. And it consumed her. In her blind devotion, she did terrible things, despicable things, at his bequest. And never once did she question any of his orders. Not even when he ordered her to bomb countless colonies and decimate entire cities to get them to surrender to the will of the Lord Emperor.

  In her zealotry, she did not question. She only obeyed. And it was because of this single-mindedness to serve her emperor at the cost of all else, that she had risen through the ranks faster than any Dagon officer before her.

  She had been ruthless. Fearless. And she would have gladly continued to be so if it weren’t for the small fact that the most unexpected thing happened. She fell in love.

  What’s more, she fell in love with a common slave. And although it wasn’t unheard of for nobles to raise slaves to the status of permanent courtesans or sometimes even wives, it was completely another to have to share the love of your life with the cruelest dictator the galaxy had ever known.

  It was the events that transpired on the moon Cordova that had caused Danica to doubt Dakroth’s greatness. Dakroth’s betrayal of Jegra, their run-in with the Knight of Caelum, and the little fact that he had shot her to prevent her from saving Jegra, had shaken her faith.

  In that moment, Dakroth had revealed his true colors. And the illusion of the great warrior emperor came tumbling down like a stack of Vorteshian playing cards.

  It was when he ordered her to hunt Jegra down and kill her that Danica’s disillusionment was finally complete. Dakroth’s obsession with Jegra’s genome, his desire to weaponize her, and his single-minded drive to achieve galactic domination at any cost revealed a power-hungry madman willing to burn the whole bleeding galaxy to dust and ash just so long as he could continue to rule over its charred remains.

  No matter how big or how powerful the empire became, no matter how many star systems folded under Dagon military might, the Lord Emperor was always thirsty for more.

  Now, with the recent losses at the hands of the Nyctans, the Dagon Imperial Armada was stretched dangerously thin across every sector. The emperor’s lust for power was becoming detrimental to the wellbeing of the empire. Meanwhile, power struggles amongst the senatorial committee threatened to bring the Dagon Empire imploding in on itself. If that happened, the military heads would take sides and Dagon would collapse into all out civil war.

  It was now Danica’s opinion that if things continued on this way, Emperor Dakroth would drag the Dagon Empire down along with him into his descent into madness. For too long had a tyrant reigned. And no longer could her métier of serving the empire go hand in hand with serving her emperor. In the end, she could only serve one. And the truth was, the empire was greater than just one man.

  What Dagon direly needed was a change from war to diplomacy. And that was a skillset Dakroth sorely lacked.

  Jegra, on the other hand, had caught the imagination of the people. Every sector of the empire knew her name. Her gladiatorial fights were that of legend. Her battle with a Knight of Caelum in hand to hand combat was a tale for the ages. And her ability to out maneuver even Dakroth himself made her the perfect candidate for leading the Dagon empire out of an age of war and into an age of peace and prosperity.

  But if Danica was going to help Jegra usher in a new era of change for the empire, she’d first have to survive Dakroth’s anger and whatever twisted form of punishment he had in mind for her.

  “Danica, then,” Dakroth said, nonchalantly waving off her acrimonious response. He rubbed his chin and gazed at her from half-sunken eyelids that suggested that he was no longer in the mood for sardonic banter. “It seems you and I have come to an impasse,” he continued, his voice shifting in tone from affable to hostile. “If I kill you, I make a martyr of you, enhancing your already legendary status throughout the system. The great war heroine turned traitor, turned rebel, turned hero again. No. I’m afraid I must permit you to live…for the time being. You see, I’m in somewhat of a bind; I have no choice but to grant you your miserable, traitorous life.”

  She eyed him stiffly and then quipped, “How merciful of you.” As expected, he merely ignored her retort and continued on with his little tirade.

  “Humiliation and torture are what you have to look forward to, Vice Admiral. And then, once I break you, and you will break, I will take your dignity by selling your worthless, impure flesh to whichever loathsome slaver will take you. Only then will you be free of me.”

  “This little speech of yours is torture enough,” she said, sarcasm dripping off her every word like corrosive acid. “So feel free to consider us squared up and sell me to the next slave ship that comes our way.”

  Unamused, his red eyes flared with rage. Pink wisps of Dagon energy seeped out like ethereal vapor. He pulled a knife from the back of his belt and held it to her throat. Leaning in, the knife drawing a dab of blood, he snarled, “You will learn your place, banjax!”

  In the Dagoni language, the term “banjax” meant the lowest of the low. It was worse than slave, worse than whore, and the searing label was not used lightly. It meant “the defiled,” and if the emperor branded you such, it was a veritable curse.

  Nobody would associate with a banjax. They were viewed as a black stain on society. They were impure, and they had to go, had to be eliminated. There was a threat of contamination by association, which no one dare risk. Therefore, anyone deemed a banjax was forthwith banished or killed.

  Dakroth gripped Danica’s garments tightly in his left fist and began hacking at them with the blade in his right. He cut away her clothes piece by piece until she was naked before him, helpless to do anything but watch.

  Once he’d finished stripping her bare, he spat on her body and returned to the front of the shuttle.

  As his spittle dribbled down her chest and between her breasts, Danica’s rage swelled within her. “Defile me all you want. Hurt me. Dismiss me. Kill me, for all I care. Just know that there’s one woman you’ll never hold power over. And when she learns of what you’ve done to me, she’ll come for you. Do you hear me?!” Danica was practically shouting across the cabin at Dakroth, but he continued to ignore her. “Heed my words, oh great emperor. Jegra will have your head. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Ishtar looked over her shoulder and glowered at Danica. “Does she ever shut up?”

  Dakroth lowered himself into the pilot’s seat and let out a heavy sigh. After a short pause, he said, “You may begin.”

  Ishtar’s scowl melted away and a malevolent grin spread across her burgundy lips. She slowly rose up and sauntered over to Danica. There was a light spring in her step, her demeanor almost child-like in its giddiness.

  Pulling out a slender vial from the inside of her uniform, she held it up in front of Danica’s face. Inside was what appeared to be a ferocious looking centipede. It had a black armored body with hundreds of thorny red legs and giant mandibles that looked like they could bite through a korridium hull.

  “Do you know what this is? It’s a Dagon demon-worm. They live only on the southern continent of Krylon; they are subterranean. Their contact with the Dagon species has been limited, but they have evolved in a way that has given them a most unique property.”

  Danica looked at the worm and then at Ishtar’s black tattooed face. Defiant, she said nothing.

  Noting Danica’s reticence, Ishtar smiled and continued. “You see, they have an affinity for burrowing under the flesh, and they make their way to th
e lower abdomen. There, they coil around the nerves of your umbilical cord, just beneath your belly button,” she informed Danica, touching her stomach and running her red finger along the radius of Danica’s navel.

  “They pierce a feeding needle into your gut and then begin to feast on your reproductive organs, a delicacy, in their view. Once they’ve wreaked havoc on your insides, they proceed to lay their eggs. Three weeks later you give birth to a host of their offspring which burst from your abdomen. Dagon males, I’m afraid, die an excruciatingly painful death. But, luckily, a Dagon female will typically survive. You see, the creatures end up filling her uterus; this female attribute prevents her death in about half the reported cases–assuming she can get the medical attention she requires, that is.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?” Danica hissed in her most sarcastic tone.

  Enraged, Ishtar sucker punched Danica in the gut. Unable to defend herself, she took the brunt of the blow like a punching bag and spat up blood.

  Ishtar unscrewed the lid of the jaw and dumped the centipede onto Danica’s shoulder. It crawled around in figure eights, searching for an entrance point but couldn’t find one. As it slithered across her chest, Ishtar sucker punched Danica again.

  “Gah!” Danica gasped for air and the creature climbed into her mouth. As it made its way down her throat, she began coughing and heaving. Then the heaving turned to screaming and she jerked and thrashed against her shackles as the creature burrowed its way deep into her body.

  “Did I forget to mention that each slender leg of the creature releases a prick of venom as it bears down on your flesh? Venom which burns like acid as it scorches you from the inside out? Yeah, I think I forgot to mention that.”

  Through gritted teeth, Danica snarled, “Go to hell, you duplicitous psycho-hag.”

  “That’s the Cassera Van Danica I remember so fondly!” Dakroth said from the shuttle’s forward cabin.

  Ishtar glanced down to see the rounded outline of the creature already coiling around Danica’s umbilical cord. Another punch to the gut, just above the creature’s nesting area, sent unfathomable pain throughout Danica’s entire body.