by C. T. Phipps
“You’re here for Jasper, even though I know he was probably hurt just because of your power games. You didn’t run away or choose some other bastard to fight for you. So I don’t know. But I’m being paid to help by your brother so believe me when I say there will be an opening.”
I picked up the proton sword and stared at it, getting a sense of this woman. “My brother?”
“Do you have a problem with cheating? Your brother said you might.”
I did. However, looking at the blade, I took a moment to reflect on just what I was doing here. “No, I don’t. This isn’t a game. It’s a life and death struggle. I’d be a fool to avoid any advantage I could take.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that.”
“I’m not.”
I’d learned a lot of bitter lessons about the nobility during my time in the Academy as well as during my service to the Archduke. I still held to the belief the nobility were meant to hold themselves to a higher standard of behavior and responsibility in order to make up for the privileges we received, but it seemed increasingly clear I was one of the very few who believed such. Also, what constituted a higher standard of behavior was an extremely variable concept from person-to-person.
Or maybe I just didn’t want to die. It could have been as simple as that.
“What’s your name, anyway?”
“I’ll tell you if you survive.”
I nodded.
I lifted up the proton sword and returned to the arena where Pious Stone was awaiting me, as cocky as any man who was about to murder one of the nobility might ever be. He had a gravity sword I briefly found myself envious of. It was the kind of weapon that required a kingdom to purchase and was wasted on the majority of individuals who could actually afford to buy it.
“I don’t suppose you would be willing to tell me who hired you,” I said, assuming a ready position and crossing swords with the man.
“Duelist-client privilege,” Pious Stone said, assuming a similar stance. “Besides, it’s not going to do you any good.”
“Perhaps.”
The Arbiter of the duel, a sleazy waste of genetic material named Atticus MacDonald, stood between us, checked the blades haphazardly before stepping backward. “Begin!”
Our skill levels weren’t even close as no sooner had we locked blades than he pulled back and slashed through my shield, into my chest. I hadn’t even pulled my own sword back when he was ready to deliver the killing blow. The thing was, though, his blade struck my shield and promptly bounced off.
The sword created a series of sparks, making it seem like a glancing blow, a fact I was grateful for because it helped disguise the blatant sabotage done to Pious’ sword. Startled, but unwilling to let an advantage get away from me, I pulled back and stabbed my proton blade through the shield of the duelist in front of me.
I gave Pious credit as, not only had he been in a position to strike at me before I was anywhere near striking him, but he’d actually managed to move three steps to dodge my next stroke. Too bad none of that was enough to protect him. My shield deflected his blow and I moved four steps. Pious was impaled, his lungs rapidly filling with blood.
I thought of various holos I’d seen and considered offering him a chance to go to a doctor in exchange for the name of his employer. Any sort of debate or thought toward that end, though, ended with the fact I was left staring at the man bleeding to death in front of me. I’d killed plenty of people before but never anyone up close, and the sight was sickening.
It took a few seconds to register the Arbiter lifting up my arm in victory, as well as the cheers of the crowd who hadn’t expected an officer to be killed. They’d gotten more than their money’s worth during tonight’s exhibition. I would find myself toasted and challenged for years thereafter.
I wasn’t concerned about that, though, because later that evening I tracked down the engineer who had sabotaged Pious Stone’s sword. She disappeared after the duel and on a ship the size of the Revengeance, it took me some time to find her. The fact Jasper wasn’t speaking to me anymore made the issue more difficult. He, correctly, blamed me in part for his assault. I never did make amends to him before his death at the hands of the Commonwealth.
Even so, I discovered the woman’s name was Judith Amerlyn and she was Chief in charge of the portside engines power relays. A vital position but not exactly dripping with prestige. Finding her room afterward, I decided to pay her a visit. Standing outside a metal door on the thirty-second floor of the Revengeance, I gently rapped against it and hoped it would be answered.
It wasn’t.
So I waited. I knew she was inside because the ship’s dummy A.I. had confirmed it.
Thirty minutes later, the door slid open.
There, standing in a pair of denim jeans and a ball cap, was Judith. I saw she was packing her things in a set of suitcases and raised an eyebrow.
“You can’t take a hint, can you?” Judith asked.
“I wasn’t aware we had any reason not to converse,” I said. “Going somewhere?”
“The money came in and my early pension. I’m going to see about my getting my family moved out of the hellhole they live in and a job where I can support them. Being a soldier is great but it’s not enough to save everyone I love.”
“Perhaps I can help.”
Judith raised an eyebrow. “Just magically wave your noble-born hand and make all of the poor commoner girl’s problems go away?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
Judith snorted but smiled. “Why do you care, anyway?”
“You promised me you’d tell me your name if I won. Also, I owe you my life. Surprisingly, I take that seriously.”
“So, I’ve heard. You really have no idea how the system works, do you?”
“I’m getting a crash course.”
Judith stepped aside, and I walked into her room, which I noticed was a study in contrasts. Aside from the Spartan furnishings to be expected of someone serving as a commoner technician, there were also bits of business as well. There were holos of dancing school, etiquette, and fencing. I also saw pictures of younger women, sisters I presumed, though there was no sign of her parents.
“Fascinating history,” I said, looking at them.
“My mother spent all of my dead father’s savings trying to train me to be a concubine. It was a stupid plan. One she ended up bitterly regretting.”
“You too willful for it?”
“Something like that,” Judith said. “I objected to the part where I’d be sterilized as part of the arrangement.”
I, thankfully, had the presence of mind not to mention that was reversible. “I was curious how you sabotaged Pious’ gravity blade.”
“I have a lot of experience with swords,” Judith said, gesturing to one of the holos. “I’m also a pretty good engineer. I managed to rig a device for disrupting its gravity aura.”
“I was curious if you were for hire.”
Judith raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you get yourself some actual security? Your brother is a member of the secret police. Find out who wanted you killed and deal with them.”
“I figured that out quickly enough. I got my confirmation when Thomas was evasive about who he thought did it.”
Judith blinked. “What do you mean?”
“His mother,” I said, not wanting to speak too much about it. “Lady Plantagenet has always resented the fact her children chose not to kill me. Just the same as my father resented my not killing them.”
Judith’s eyes widened.
I regretted things had ended the way they had with Amita Plantagenet. I’d never possessed a mother and had been raised by servants, but I’d always hoped to win her respect as it seemed my father had done her many ills. Instead, I’d found a cold-hearted and brutal manipulator whose every other word was a cutting insult. I’d learned exactly what sort of person she was when she’d had a servant’s eyes put out for being blackmailed into spying on her.
“Thomas, Zoe,
and their cousins are arranging for her to spend the rest of her life in contemplation among the Sisters of Nammah. I’m not worried about her anymore, but I am aware I have blind spots. Blind spots I’d like to address.”
Judith raised an eyebrow. “And you think I’m a good person for helping you with them, why?”
I shrugged. “I have a good feeling about you.”
“If this is about buying yourself a date, I’ll have you know I’m not for sale.”
“Thank you, my dear, but I have plenty of experience with that already. I found the experience boring.”
“Clearly, you weren’t buying the right ones. Concubine training is all about making the idiot nobles think they’re genuinely loved rather than their bank account. Also, they should never be boring. You should always get what you pay for.”
I smirked. “Just promise me you’ll never curb that tongue.”
“You don’t have enough money to get me to do so. I’m serious; I looked up your bank records. You’re kind of poor for a nobleman.”
“I’m mostly cut off.”
“Good. Then I can leave you when the money runs out.”
I stared into her face and the memories became once more a collection of fire. Judith and I had never precisely loved one another, at least the way some people described it. As enchanting as I found her, she always viewed me as more a close friend who had allowed her into the world of high society. She had encouraged me to seek love with others and I’d never found it. My other bribes had their secrets to tell.
And they were all gone now.
Ashes.
Staring at Judith in the present day, reborn like a phoenix from those selfsame ashes, I couldn’t help but wonder how things had come to this. This woman was not my wife any more than Zoe was my sister, married to my clone as she was, yet it conjured possibilities that were shameful. I thought about the possibility of Zoe creating another Judith or trying to win this terrorist-allied woman over to my cause. I pushed those thoughts out of my mind and walked up to her alongside Clarice, giving a bow to both Judith and Janice Rin-O’Harra.
Looking over at Clarice and observing our attire, I was momentarily ashamed of how we appeared, then emboldened. I had been attracted to Clarice in large part because she had been a woman of steel and fire like Judith had been. She’d set aside her past here and, following in her example, I needed to do the same. The part of my life with Judith was over because she was dead. This was just a mockery of who she was.
I had to keep telling myself that.
“Welcome, sister,” Janice said, her voice soft and melodic. It was a complete contrast to Clarice’s own deeper and more hardened tones. “I see you have brought a new set of companions.” Her eyes darted to Isla in the back. “Though I’d hoped you’d have stopped playing with dolls by now.”
A grimace momentarily passed across Clarice’s face. “Permission to approach and speak into your ear, cousin.”
“Granted,” Janice said. “I fear many of my relatives. You, however, are not among them.”
Confused, I watched Clarice walk up to Janice and tell her something I could not understand. Janice’s eyes widened, then closed before opening again. “Thank you, Clarice.”
“You’re welcome,” Clarice said, taking a step back.
“What did you tell her?” I couldn’t help but ask.
Clarice didn’t meet my gaze.
“Guards,” Janice said, smiling. “Seize them.”
Judith smiled at me…
… Right before I was struck in the neck with a shock spear.
Chapter Twenty-Six
In retrospect, I should have seen Clarice’s betrayal coming. I didn’t, though, because I was so wrapped up in my own problems I never gave any thought to how she might feel about our situation. That our efforts had not only exposed her family to danger but potentially brought the Commonwealth’s wrath down on her world.
Clarice was a woman who desperately wanted to do the right and noble thing, yet raised by slavers she still loved. Too often in life we think of ourselves as the main characters in a grand story with everyone else being bit players. I had made the mistake of not giving empathy to someone I supposedly cared for and was now going to pay for it with my life.
None of which mattered as I lay twitching on the ground. All I could do was watch helplessly as everyone else was stunned and Isla was shut off like an appliance. Clarice raised a protest, but I couldn’t make out the words. I saw Kristoph get tossed off the side of the landing platform into the crashing waves beneath. Given it was a two-hundred-foot drop, I didn’t expect to see the Planetary Commerce Commissioner again.
I was dragged from the landing platform while the guards secured everyone else. They handcuffed me, took me to a reflective metal holding cell where they suspended me by my wrists from the ceiling, and gave me jolts with shock spears until I fell unconscious. What followed was agony as I drifted in and out of my incapacitated state.
I remembered little metal spiders crawling across my body, some going into my nose and down my throat. I remembered Chel doctors examining me and staring into my eyes with pen-lights. I remembered screaming as I felt the spiders cut into my bone from beneath my flesh with lasers, tearing off my face. I recalled losing control of my bodily functions during this time. Finally, I remembered a set of mechs walking in, stripping off my clothes, and hosing me down with jet streams of water.
Was I being tortured? If so, it was a bizarre way of going about it. They didn’t ask any questions nor seek to keep me awake during the process. They were treating me, instead, as if I was an animal in need of preparation. I just wasn’t sure if it was for slaughter or show. It didn’t really matter either way, I supposed, since any chance I might have had of affecting events had gone away the moment I’d been stunned. I wasn’t delusional about my chances of escape and, in the heart of the most powerful woman in the sector’s dungeons, I suspected they were close to nonexistent.
I passed out again an hour or so after being sprayed by the mechs, only to be awoken by the sound of a music box playing the old Earth ballad “Come on Eileen.” Trying to open swollen shut eyes, I struggled to see what was before me.
My entire face hurt, and it seemed like my jaw was wired shut. Initially, my vision was blurry and only indistinct shapes were visible. Slowly, the nanites in my blood accelerated my body’s healing enough that I could see the outline of Judith standing there.
My wife was wearing the same clothes she’d been dressed in before, which indicated it was still the same day. The music box, which had been a gift from me, was sitting beside her feet while she carried a black leather bag in her right hand. Judith’s expression was even and cold.
I was naked and hung suspended from the hook in the chrome room. The room smelled terrible and there was blood as well as bits and pieces of flesh spread across the ground on top of the drain at the center. I also saw a few of the metal spiders, dead and lifeless, on the ground. Proof they weren’t a product of my fevered imagination and something terrifyingly real.
Forcing my mouth open, I managed to say, “Deciding to join…in…on the torture? I’m surprised. It’s…not usually your…style.”
Judith walked up to me, looking me up and down. “You weren’t tortured, Cassius. If you were tortured, I can assure you, you’d know it.”
“What would you call it then?” I asked, taking note of the fact she knew my true identity. My mouth was relaxing, and speech was becoming easier.
Judith reached into the side of her leather bag and pulled out a plain silver vanity mirror, which she presented to me. The image on the other side of it was my original face, restored with only a few half-healed scars on the sides to indicate otherwise.
“You put me under to give me genetic surgery?” I asked.
“Yes,” Judith said. “It disgusted me to see you hiding your true identity and living as a cargo jockey.”
“The Judith I knew wasn’t contemptuous of those who worked for a living
. Quite the opposite in fact.”
“The Judith you knew worked for a living and was overjoyed when she no longer had to. She also knew her husband was ill-suited to anything but life in the military. Working among the Melampus’ crew is like having a dragon live among cattle.”
She clearly didn’t know the Melampus crew very well. “And yet here we are.”
Judith gave a half-smile, then let the expression fade from her face. “Why are you working for the people who murdered me?”
“Not a question one gets asked often, unless you’re capable of talking to ghosts.”
“I’m serious.”
“As am I.” I closed my eyes, unable to stand the brightness of the room any longer. “I am still getting used to the fact you’re standing there, in front of me, a bioroid who is in every possible way but the most important one, the woman I married. It is a cruel and twisted jest by the universe to play, as I know the woman I married is dead because of the nobility starting a war we couldn’t win. My starting a war we couldn’t win. So, you ask why I am working for the Commonwealth, I ask why you are working with people who are going to end up getting everything left of Crius destroyed.”
“Impressive.”
“Impressive?” I opened my eyes again, surprised.
“You have lost none of your ability to pontificate while living among drug-dealers, scavengers, and slavers.”
Judith was baiting me. Unfortunately, she was succeeding. “I do not work with slavers.”
“You’re sleeping with Clarice O’Harra and her pet bioroid. I’ve already gotten much of the story from her. The Rin-O’Harras are slavers, and the fact you’re in bed with one and her property disgusts me.”
“Isla is a free woman. I also, apparently, did not know Clarice as well as I thought I did.”
Judith cocked her head to one side, looking at me from a different angle. “We are getting off on the wrong foot.”
I laughed, stunned by the absurdity of it all. “I suppose you could say that, yeah. What do you want, Judith?”
“To make sure you leave this room alive.”