Imperatrix of the Galaxy

by Tristan Vick

  In three days, she’d either die in the arena fighting for her survival or face a fate worse than death. Because even with her and Ishtar’s powers and abilities, the two of them alone weren’t going to be enough to fend off twelve of the Intergalactic Gladiatorial Syndicate’s best warriors in the Bull and Swan bout. She wasn’t impossibly strong like Jegra. And even with Ishtar’s rage and bloodthirst, they wouldn’t be at their best. The odds were stacked against them, and all she could do was try to mentally fortify herself for what was to come.

  Despite several weeks of grueling matches, she still felt green around the edges. She walked away from every match with more bruises and broken bones than she had the previous one and it was always an uphill battle. Now she understood what it truly meant to be a warrior. It wasn’t issuing orders from the bridge of some fortified starship high in orbit. It was getting your hands dirty. It was fighting for something you believed in. Fighting for your very survival.

  She just wasn’t sure about how much more of it she could endure. Even if, by some miracle, she made it out of the Bull and Swan bout unscathed and alive, what next? What would it take to regain her freedom?

  32

  “I hear you’ve been looking for me,” Jegra said, eyeing the prisoner from behind the nano-mesh glass of the security cell. “Well, you found me.”

  Teal eyes gazed back at her and the green-skinned woman stood up and scanned Jegra from head to foot. “You’re taller than I imagined you’d be.”

  “I get that a lot, actually. Most people aren’t accustomed to seeing a six-foot-three female.” Jegra tossed her long brown hair over her shoulder, threw her hand on her hip, and carefully studied the woman who studied her in return.

  The inevitable “sizing up,” as she so aptly referred to it. It was an unspoken greeting among warriors. Gauging one’s opponents’ skills, capabilities, and motives with a simple glance wasn’t a talent that just anyone possessed. It took practice and the right sort of conditioning so one would know precisely what to look for. But if two and a half years in the arena had taught her anything, it was how to read an opponent.

  “One-hundred and ninety-one centimeters? Impressive. I am about one-eighty-six. What are you, two-hundred-twenty pounds?”

  “Two-fifty, actually,” Jegra replied, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

  “One-ninety,” Angellyk answered, brushing her wavy forest-green hair from her eyes.

  Both women stared at each other in silence for a bit and then Jegra spoke. “I hear you’re Raven’s ex-wife.”

  “News gets around fast on this ship.”

  “I’m the Empress,” Jegra said in a stately tone. “If there’s something to know aboard this ship, you’d better bet I’m going to be sure to know it.”

  “Speaking of which, that’s precisely why I’m here. I have a message for you.”

  “Right,” Jegra interjected, waving her hand in the air nonchalantly. “Something about Hastur invading the Commonwealth and me being the only one who can stop him.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Angellyk said, her eyes growing serious. “It’s about the prophesy. It’s about your husband, the Emperor, Lord Dakroth.”

  “What about the Lord Emperor?” Jegra stopped fiddling with her hair and quickly matched Angellyk’s level of intensity. Squinting suspiciously, Jegra put her fist to her mouth and cleared her throat. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “The emperor hired me to intercept you. I’m to stop you from returning to Thessalonica at all cost. Even if it means I must kill you.”

  “But…” Jegra said, connecting all the clues to the mystery, “you’re not going to do that.”

  “No. Because what the emperor doesn’t know is that I’m part of an ancient order. I’m a Voroxian Priestess.”

  “Voroxian Priestess?” Jegra echoed. She hadn’t heard of them.

  “It is said, in the prophesy, that H’aaztre has three harbingers of light that will precede his coming. Each one will take the form of one of the Gilded Master’s traits. You’ll have the Warrior which represents his power. The Priestess which represents his devotion. And the Destroyer which represents his vision. It is their mission to open the breach from their universe into ours. The Order of Vorox intends to keep that portal shut at all costs.”

  “How come I’ve never heard of your order…of Vorox…until now?”

  “Because, we are considered a heretical order by the Nyctans. We are the female Knights of Caelum. The first of us being Lady Vorox Amadeen. And it was Lady Amadeen’s belief that the Nyctans had misinterpreted the sacred texts. She felt the ancient scribes had mistranslated certain passages in the Enchiridion more than seven thousand years ago and believed Hastur wasn’t a benevolent being who’d destroy and rebuild the world in his image, but was merely a being of pure destruction. For this she was martyred. Burned at the stake in a barbaric display for all to see what happened to heretics.”

  “The Knights allow women now. I should know, they inducted me into their ranks.”

  “Not precisely,” Angellyk said, rubbing her chin. “They promoted you to the position of head emissary. It’s the only position, beside the oracle, that a female can hold within the Knighthood. Then they just bent a few of their own rules, given that you were an outsider and an alien. But, as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy...”

  “What’s any of this have to do with Dakroth?”

  “Dakroth intends to help the administratrix bring the prophecy to fruition. As we speak, they are undertaking the sacred ritual of coitus clavis aurea, also known as the ritual of the Chosen One.”

  “Wait a nano-second, does coitus in this context mean what I think it means?”

  “Yes,” Angellyk replied in all seriousness. “They are creating a half-breed. If deemed worthy by the Carcosan virgins, he will be prepared as the vessel for the coming God. If not, the offspring will be sacrificed to Hastur, as an offering. And then the priestess will have to wait another hundred years before trying again. If this sacrifice happens, though, the breach will open and the first of the emissaries will come into our universe.”

  “Then what?” Jegra asked, rubbing her chin as she mulled over the shocking details that Angellyk had shared with her.

  “Then we go to war. For the fate of the galaxy.”

  “How do I know I can trust anything you say? You’ve already admitted that you came here under false pretenses. Now you just want me to accept everything you have to say?”

  “I don’t expect you to believe me or even trust me, for that matter. But I know of someone whom you’d believe and trust implicitly.”

  “Raven,” Jegra whispered, having guessed the answer.

  “Precisely. And Raven will be the first to tell you; I cannot lie. I suffered a brain injury, an old battle wound from a long time ago, that scarred my brain in such a way that telling falsehoods is impossible for me. I am only able to tell the brutal truth.”

  “How do I know you didn’t have yourself modded so as to fix the problem?”

  “Because,” she said with a slight grin, “Raven was there when I was diagnosed. The amount of surgery required to chip me was too invasive, life threatening. I could have taken that risk, but I’d much rather live with a small inconvenience than lose my life simply to be chipped.”

  Jegra stood taking it all in and then nodded silently to herself. After another moment, she finally said, “Naturally, I’ll have to confirm all this. Until then, just chill out here.”

  Angellyk backed away from the glass and gestured with a shrug that seemed to say “you gotta do what you gotta do.” She took a seat on the bench in her cell and crossed her legs, bopping her leg up and down on one knee.

  Jegra quickly exited the brig and stormed up the corridor. She marched all the way to the airlock and quickly stepped into the connecting bridge between her ship and the Skywend.

  The door to the Skywend was open with a dozen or so cables and various assortment of cords running from the Shard,
down the corridor, into the docking arm, and over the lip of the Skywend’s airlock and then down various corridors inside the ship.

  Jegra ducked under the bulkhead and took a hard right toward the engine room where she knew Raven would be. Entering the engineering room, she scanned the interior for the captain and found her under a large, partially dismantled, conduit. She had on a welding helmet and was sending sparks everywhere with a bright plasma torch.

  “Need a hand?” Jegra asked.

  Raven finished welding whatever it was she was welding and then slid out from under the conduit. Flipping up the visor of her welding helmet she looked up at Jegra.

  “I’m good. But by the expression on your face…”

  “I just had a talk with your ex.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Actually, she wouldn’t shut up about the prophesy and some secret order called the Voroxians. She says she’s a High Priestess of the Voroxian Order and a Knight of Caelum. She sounds outright delusional, but then swears up and down that she can’t tell a lie. So, which is it? Is she telling the truth or is your ex-wife batshit insane?”

  “Although I’d love to claim the latter, the truth is,” Raven let out a deep sigh, “she’s telling the truth. It’s one of the reasons we didn’t work out so well. She was caught up in her religious faith and I just wasn’t all that religious. Still, we had our moment. Brief though it was.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Jegra turned to the side and gazed off at some blinking lights on a control panel and got lost in thought.

  Raven stowed the torch, slipped off the welding helmet, and stood up. She had dirt and grease stains all over her and wore a medium gray tank top that sported sweat stains.

  “If you want I could go have a talk with her and handle the situation. Maybe try to reason with her.”

  “No,” Jegra said in a soft tone, still deep in thought. “I don’t want to cause any unnecessary friction between you two. I’ll deal with Angellyk when the time is right. There are more pressing matters at the moment that may need our attention. Danica is going to be in for the fight of her life in three days and I intend to intervene before anything bad happens to her.”

  “Ah, I see,” Raven said, letting out a disappointed huff.

  “I’m afraid that waiting for you to make all the necessary repairs will take too long. I want to be on our way by O-seven hundred.”

  “That only gives me about ten hours to get her up and running.”

  “Can you do it in that amount of time?”

  Raven mulled it over for a moment, grabbing her elbow with one hand and her chin with her other. “If I keep my crew working around the clock and I borrow two from your team, then, yes. It’s doable.”

  “Great,” Jegra said, smiling. “I’ll have Captain Blackstar send over two of our best engineers.”

  “Just one thing,” Raven added at the last minute just as Jegra was about to leave. “I’m afraid I’ll need to take a raincheck on our wrestling match.”

  “Oh, you were serious about that? I thought we were just…”

  “Thought we were what, exactly?” Raven batted her eyes at Jegra, deliberately giving her an inquisitive look that imitated the innocence of a small child.

  “I thought we were flirting. Kinda.” Growing self-conscious, she hemmed and hawed, swaying nervously as she held one arm and shot Raven a guilty look. “I mean, I thought you were just teasing me about that. You already know I’m as much into women as I am men and that I like to mess around more than your average girl.”

  “Oh, I know,” Raven said, smiling affectionately. “And if you weren’t the empress, I’d be inclined to maybe ask you out for a drink.”

  Jegra grew even more self-conscious, which was out of character for her, but around Raven, she simply didn’t know how to conduct herself. “Why am I so nervous right now?” Jegra asked out loud. Raven shrugged, still smiling at her. Feeling that it was awfully hot in the room, Jegra bent her arms and raised her elbows and checked her armpits. “And I’m sweating.”

  Raven laughed. “Just relax. We’re friends first. That’ll never change. But I know what you mean. It’s like flirting with someone you’ve had a secret crush on for ages but then, once you get the chance to be alone together, it feels like…”

  “It feels like making sexual advances toward your sister,” Jegra added, finishing Raven’s sentence for her.

  “Right,” she replied. “That’s exactly what it’s like. It would be like hitting on your own sister. Not me, though. I’m not a big perv like you.” Raven held her serious face as long as she could but then, unable to hold it back any longer, cracked a smile.

  “Oh, you little…” Jegra replied with a laugh. “If we weren’t such good friends,” she said, waving a playful finger at Raven, “I’d totally slap you right now.”

  “Be careful,” Raven teased back, “I might like that.”

  Jegra gulped. “Seriously, what’s gotten into you?”

  Raven laughed again. “I have no idea. It’s just been ages since I have felt this comfortable around someone.” Looking into Jegra’s eyes, she added, “But I’m glad it’s with you.”

  “Me too,” Jegra answered. After an awkward pause, she thumbed over her shoulder, and said, “Alright. I best be getting back to it. I’ll send over those engineers asap.”

  “I’ll be right here,” Raven said, returning to her stripped-down power conduit and picking up her welding torch. As she bent down, she thrust her hips out in such a way that Jegra couldn’t be sure she wasn’t doing it on purpose or if Jegra was recognizing for the first time how beautiful Raven truly was. Admittedly, she’d been so preoccupied by other matters that she’d never paused to take a good look at the woman. Raven was just sort of the friend who came and went at her leisure, and that had always suited Jegra just fine. Now, she seemed to occupy a special place in Jegra’s mind.

  Jegra looked back one last time, hoping maybe Raven would glance back over her shoulder too, but instead of loitering about like a love-struck vole, she decided to shelve it for later and hurried out of the engineering bay and back up the corridor to the airlock that conjoined their two ships.

  “Empress!” Skuld’s voice chirped as she rushed past an open door that led to the mess hall.

  “Can’t talk now, Skuld. Got important business.”

  “Righteo!” he shouted back, seeing as she was already out of sight.

  She felt bad for ditching him like that. Skuld was one of the few friends she knew she could trust with her life. But time was of the essence and, as much as she’d like to catch up with him, they were working against the clock.

  It only took her a few minutes to make her way to the bridge, and ducking under the bulkhead she stepped onto the command deck of the Shard.

  “Her Royal Eminence on deck!” an officer shouted.

  Lianica looked up and turned to see Jegra. Standing to greet the empress, she asked, “What is it?”

  “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Jegra answered. “And not enough time to do it in.”

  Back in the prison cell aboard the Shard, Angellyk hummed a hymn she’d learned as a child, when a voice called out, “So, what do you think? Is she the savior the holy texts speak of? Is she the Daughter of Sol?”

  Angellyk stopped mid-hum and slowly rose to her feet. “Who’s there?” Walking up to the glass, she cupped her hands and peered out into the room and scanned the adjoining prison cells. Finally, she saw another like her–a Bre’lal woman. But unlike her, she was quite fetching. She had super-model looks and eyes that burned with a deep-seated passion that Angellyk instantly recognized.

  “Onelle? Onelle Agnar? What in the bleedin’ galaxy are you doing here?”

  “It’s a long story. But, to summarize, I tried to kill the empress.”

  “What?! Why would you do that?”

  “I had a parasite. Or so they tell me. But just to be sure it was the parasite talking and wasn’t me, I’m back here. Waiting for the t
est results of my neuro-scan.” She motioned to her cell as if she were giving a grand tour of the place.

  “Makes sense. You can’t just go around assassinating the Empress of the Dagon Empire and not expect to find yourself in prison.”

  “So I’ve learned. But enough about me. What brings you here, Angie?”

  Angellyk snorted as she laughed. Hardly anyone but Raven and her mother called her Angie. “Oh, I was ordered to kill the empress. But I decided to warn her instead. After all, I think my ex has a thing for her. And if I killed her Raven would never forgive me. So, here I am. Talking to you.”

  “That’s funny,” Onelle said, a soft nasally sounding chortle rising up from her throat.

  “Why’s that funny?”

  “We’re both in here for essentially the same crime.”

  “I guess we are,” Angellyk answered.

  “So, what do you think she’ll do with us?”

  “You mean other than collecting enough green skins to start her own brothel?”

  Onelle smiled amusedly. Her species prided themselves of their monopoly on the sex trade. Angellyk’s implication was that Jegra was honorable, and therefore would let them continue in a profession they both honored and respected.

  But, at the same time, it implied Jegra would have some small degree of power over them. Maybe not as slaves, per se, but as business associates. Not that it would necessarily be a bad thing to get in bed with the empress. Onelle could think of two dozen ways that allying herself with the Empress of the Dagon Empire could greatly benefit her and her enterprise.

  “Yes, other than that,” she replied with a laugh.

  “I have no idea. But if I had to venture a guess…” Angellyk paused and then shook it out of her mind. “Nah.”