by Greg Dragon
The following night, after the troopers broadcast the spliced up message from Marika, a sole black figure scampered along across the rooftops with steps so soft, it seemed to be more ghost than person. The figure jumped across the square and seemed to vanish into thin air, and then it was amongst the people, walking calmly as if it simply belonged. A few minutes later it was scampering up the side of a building and onto the rooftops again, running like its life relied upon it.
Marika Tsuno reached the palace of the Emperor a little before midnight, when she knew Qeran Kyle would be leaving his office to walk up to his room. She had found out his schedule from Delyi, since he had paid for her services several times in the past. Marika saw that there were enough of the crimson guard around the palace to take on an army and caught sight of a few snipers stationed on the rooftop.
There were no buildings close enough to the palace for her to use the rooftop to gain access. It was surrounded on all sides by a manmade moat, and a ten-foot spiked fence with its sole entryway patrolled by a variety of seasoned guards. It was the type of challenge that Marika relished, and she squatted near the edge of the Veece Capital Library’s roof, staring at the looming palace and deciding what to do.
As a pure assassination, a fortress such as this would be penetrated by throwing gas at the guards, then running past them as they all fell. As a Phaser, it would be easy: simply shoot a crystal into a window and then step through the void and appear there within seconds. But she had used up most of the crystals they had brought with them and she didn’t know what else would need to be done in order to help Marian with her mission.
She took a long, hard look at the fence and saw that the person who set up the security detail assumed no one would be able to scale it and get over. She dropped to the streets outside of the lights and then skipped over to the far side of the fence.
Marika slid along it, keeping low to the ground, and then used her knife to touch its surface to see if it was deadly to the touch. The security person had foolishly decided against an electrical fence, so she snaked her way to the far left side of the palace grounds where the trees grew the thickest. The groundskeepers had cut the branches back that would have hung over the fence, but the darkness of the area gave her enough cover to remain unseen.
A large spotlight shone from the top of a parapet down to where she was. She was in a black 3B suit with boots that could stick, so she scaled the tall fence easily until she was near the spikes. She pushed down on a spike to see if it would penetrate the tight, alien substance that comprised the suit, and when it resisted the spike she reached up and gripped two of them firmly.
With a move that defied both the strength and agility that any woman should have, Marika raised her legs and body up slowly until she stood suspended above the fence, her hands still gripping the spikes firmly. She bent her arms until her nose was near one of the spikes and then pushed up suddenly, tucking her knees into three forward flips. She landed softly on the inside of the fence where the spotlight was moving to reveal her.
She scrambled to the side and then sprinted to the outer edge of the moat and did an aerial cartwheel over it to gain the wall of the palace. Her momentum threw her higher than she expected and she smashed into the wall. Ignoring the pain, she scaled the towering wall to an open veranda where she hopped up and caught her breath. She was sweating profusely, and her heart was racing, but she slipped behind a barrel and knelt to meditate.
“I got this, I got this,” she whispered as she sent air into her lungs. She moved the negative energy into her lungs and then out of her mouth when she exhaled. After ten minutes of this, she stood up and checked her arsenal, making sure she had dropped neither crystal nor gun on her entrance to the palace.
When she felt ready for action, Marika slipped inside the open door of the veranda, and slid past a couple of lovers too engrossed in one another to see her slip in and then exit through their front door. Marika pulled out the rough map that Delyi had drawn her and remembered that the living quarters were two floors up from the offices. She slid out to a balcony that overlooked a great courtyard inside of the palace, and then slipped back into the shadows when she realized how illuminated the place was.
There were crimson guards in their shiny black armor walking the balcony and accompanying hallways. Marika ran back to the room that she had just exited as she tried to figure out how to get to the wing that held the offices. When she figured it out, she pulled up her hood, wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, and then walked leisurely down the hallway with her hand on her knife, ready to use it on anyone who stopped her.
She made it to a large staircase leading down, steadying her breathing as she descended it. She passed by a number of Tyheran guests of the palace who merely smiled at her and kept on moving. The people were dressed in all manners of fashion so she realized that her hooded shawl, black tights—which they would assume her 3B suit to be—and soft, rubber-like boots were just her own individual style. She took advantage of it and normalized her gait, covering her face and looking away to hide her Casanian features.
When she got to the second floor, Marika was surprised by the lack of security. There were no crimson guards, or turreted androids, and as she opened the door to his waiting room, it was empty with the exception of the large vid screens displaying her chopped up recording on the news.
The room was majestic, showcasing a shiny, tiled floor of alternating white and black patterns. There were numerous columns carved with elaborate designs that ran from the floor to a ceiling that showcased a mural of Veece during another age. The walls had vid screens but it also had paintings, expensive oil renditions of the different planets.
One of the paintings caught her eye immediately, as it showed an enormous portrait of a warrior with his chin out. The arrogant stance and the care in the detail made Marika assume that it was the infamous Palus Felitious. He’s handsome, she thought, and smiled beneath her shawl. And here I thought he would look like a monster.
She looked around for cameras or androids on patrol, then slipped behind one of the columns that would obscure her from the doors on the opposite side of the room.
As the pulse on her wristband warned that the hour for Kyle’s departure had come, she pulled out the MCPT-90 “Hammer of Gods” that she had affectionately nicknamed “Little Bit.” The gun was one of the most powerful handguns in Anstractor, and unlike the other, more powerful weapons within the arsenal, the MCPT-90 was Vestalian-made. It was a weapon used by officers to punch holes in vessels when times got desperate, but Marika took advantage of its plasma-generated rounds to take out her marks easily.
A normal assassin utilized graceful weapons like knives, swords, kinetic pistol rounds, and the traditional bow and arrow. Marika was more pragmatic about killing, however, and wanted to make sure that no matter where her shot hit, it would stop her target from retaliating.
The “Red Lord” Qeran Kyle was leaving his office when he saw the masked woman in the hallway staring at him with an odd weapon in her hand. He recognized her for what she was and pulled out his gun and fired two shots at her. Marika was not one for subtlety, wanting her prey to see her before he died, so she stood in the hall, waiting for him, and was ready to move as soon as his gun was drawn.
She timed her handspring backwards to dodge the shots, and then bounced up into a backflip with a twist to counter with a bark from her “Little Bit.” The shot hit the column that Kyle had retreated to and the stone erupted from the impact, taking some of the flesh off his face with it.
The scream the Red Lord emitted from the pain was blood curdling, and a few of his Crimson Guard rushed in from behind Marika to see what had happened to their leader. Marika pulled a carf knife from out of her belt and gutted them as they rushed in. She took a woman by the throat and used her body as a shield as Kyle began shooting rapidly in her direction.
More guards rushed in but were hit by Kyle’s blind fire as he held a bloody paw up to his face, trying to hold i
t together while shooting round after round of laser fire in Marika’s direction.
Dropping the dead woman and retreating to the far corner of the wall, Marika snatched a weapon from her thigh, a weapon that looked like the letter “S.” She raised it above her head and squeezed the center, and it produced a series of blades that fanned out to form a bladed circle around her hand. The assassin spun and released the disc-like weapon. It made a buzzing sound before taking Kyle’s head clean off. The guards had pushed in from the side closest to Kyle and they now looked visibly afraid of Marika, who stood with the shawl over her face and her “Little Bit” smoking at her side.
They inched towards her slowly, the space between them a mere twenty yards or so, but Marika tossed down a crystal as they began to descend upon her. To the Felitian guards who knew nothing of crystal technology or the Phasers, it seemed as if the deadly assassin had simply stepped backwards and disappeared. They scoured the hallway looking for her, but she was gone and their leader, Qeran Kyle, was no more.
Marika appeared inside the hotel room to the surprise of Delyi, who was sitting up on the bed, watching a movie on the vid screen.
“How did it go?” she asked Marika, as the assassin collected her things and pointed to Delyi’s luggage for her to collect them.
“He’s gone,” Marika said stoically.
“G-gone?” the Primian pressed, her eyes wide with wonderment, like that of a child’s. Marika pushed past her and grabbed a bag, and then began to shove the woman’s clothes in it until she collected her wits and moved to pack herself.
When they were packed and ready, Marika opened the door and then rushed to the staircase leading down.
“We’re bypassing the elevator?” Delyi asked, and Marika ignored her and picked up the pace.
“Questions later. Move your butt,” she announced, and Delyi complied, lifting her luggage so that she could keep up with her dangerous, alien friend.
They got to the lobby, which was filled with people talking loudly, and from the staircase Marika could see that there were armed troopers scanning the crowd and pushing people around. A loud siren blared, followed by screams and the sound of gunfire in the distance. She grabbed Delyi and pushed her through the kitchen, where the cooks looked stunned. They ran to the back door where the tall city wall loomed above them like an impenetrable force field.
Marika had four crystals left and she didn’t want to use them but felt she had no choice since Delyi would not be able to scale the wall. There was no way they would be able to exit the city now that Qeran Kyle had been assassinated. In the sky she could see that they had launched hover bugs to find the assassin.
“We’re too late! They will catch us,” Delyi whined, but Marika put a finger to her lips and told her to be quiet. She ran them around the wall to the area where the stream came through to feed the water supply of Veece.
“Follow me and swim like you’ve never swum before,” she said to the Primian, and then dove into the stream as far down as she could before swimming towards the wall. The Veece troopers had neglected to put a grate beneath the wall, so they were able to swim out, and Marika let the current wash her downstream towards a river.
The water was freezing and Marika almost drowned; it was not so much the cold that shocked her into a panic but her body reacting to a temperature it didn’t agree with. But she thought about Marian and her sworn Phaser oath to finish the mission, and she began moving her arms and kicking her feet to swim and get past her body’s surrender. Delyi, however, took to the water like a fish. She touched Marika on the arm and pointed towards the gap in the wall.
When they had pushed on past the wall and were floating south of the city, Delyi grabbed Marika’s hand and propelled her forward, swimming with the current to get them past the city. They swam past a series of fishing huts where the inhabitants were asleep, and around a few bends where the current picked up speed and became dangerous. Delyi pushed them past rocks and deep dips that threatened to drown them, and then the stream fell off a cliff into a large river.
The two women crashed into the deep waters of the river and were lucky that they missed a pair of rocks that were closer to the cliff. It was warmer in this pool and Marika found her strength, so they swam to the closest bank and climbed out of the water.
A low rumbling growl brought them around and Marika saw a hulking, bloated, leathery creature with rows of jagged teeth scrambling towards them. It looked like a fat lizard with tiny legs, but she didn’t wait to observe it as it had marked Delyi for consumption and was determined to have her. Marika touched her leg and brought out “Little Bit,” who was wet but primed for action. She flipped a switch to keep it quiet, and then rolled towards Delyi and stepped into a crouch before placing a blast of plasma into the creature’s mouth.
The beast exploded, leaving green guts all over the bank. Marika snatched Delyi’s arm and ran towards the trees, away from the water.
“Do we know where we’re going?” Delyi asked, but Marika didn’t reply, just kept on moving.
“Where’s your family?” Marika asked after about fifteen minutes of running through the trees. She had been wondering about the girl and what to do with her once the mission was over and they had to return to Anstractor.
“Everyone I know and love is on Primia. It is a planet far away from here. I was hoping to get money to buy a ticket at a Starport. Then I could fly home and start over, look in on my parents. You know, the typical stuff,” Delyi said.
Marika wanted to ignore the absurdity of Delyi’s story, but her curiosity got the better of her. “How in the world did you end up in Veece as a courtesan, Delyi?”
“I know that you aren’t from this system but I think you should know. Slavers prey on two planets in Luca more than anywhere else. The planets of Deij, where your Deijen friend is from, and the planet of Primia, my planet. They get the Deijen because of their strength and ferocity: they make for good guards, and some farmers use them to work the land,” Delyi began.
“Wait a second, am I hearing you right? They allow slavery here on Tyhera?” Marika asked, slowing them down to a walk as she dried the sweat from her brow and looked at Delyi.
“Allow it? Nothing would function for the rich if they had no slaves,” Delyi said. “Primian women are deemed extremely attractive by Tyheran men. The richest lords pride themselves on having a harem of us, and our boys suffer the same fate if they are deemed handsome by Lords who favor them. Our planet is a peaceful one, Marika, and it is not uncommon when a foolish young girl playing outside gets snatched up by a slaver. That was me when I was fourteen. I ran out of the house when my mother and I were arguing and the next thing I knew, I became the property of a Tyheran skin trader.
“I have grown to hate men more that you could ever understand,” she said to Marika, but she didn’t look over at her.
Marika stopped her and forced her around where she could see that the moisture on her face was not from the river or the sweat from their hot jungle trek.
“We’re going to get you home, Delyi, don’t you worry,” Marika said. “But I have unfinished business in Veece, so we need a place for you to hide while I go back to rescue the rebels.”
Memory 14
Marian woke up to the bump of the starship as it landed within the flawless Starport of Dearin, Talula. This city was one of the only places on that area of the moon to have survived the scortchet bomb. When she looked outside the window at her surroundings, she saw armed Felitian guards everywhere. They were all on high-alert and she wondered if something had happened recently to cause this.
Self-consciously, she unbuckled her seatbelt and ran into the bathroom to check her appearance. She looked at herself in the mirrors and adjusted her hair. In her mind, she appeared the same as any other Tyheran noblewoman, but she wanted to make sure that everything was in place. She caught a flash of her eyes and realized that something was off. Tyheran nobles were hoity and rude, but they also held a look of apathy and stoic indiffer
ence. What she saw reflected in her eyes was fire: she was primed to get things started in the rescue, and if any trooper were to see her, they would think she was up to something.
She walked out of the bathroom and joined the line of travelers exiting the ship. They descended the escalator to the floor of the Starport, and Marian saw that the troopers were opening each of their bags to check for contraband. As calmly as she could, she reached inside her pocket and snatched the bag of crystals. She then reached up to touch the top-knot in her hair and slipped them beneath her tightly wrapped curls.
“Good day, Sha’an, please hand us your luggage and stand in front of the scanning droid, please,” the large, armored trooper said.
Marian complied, trying to keep her cool as a stream of light from the droid went up and down her body.
“Is this standard procedure, officer?” Marian asked, keeping her eyes low and chin high in the way of a well-behaved Tyheran citizen.
“First time to Talula, eh? We typically don’t check travelers, but with the recent attacks on our Emperor’s city, we have to tighten up security,” he said.
The android made a series of noises and then the white light grew red. The trooper removed his mask and frowned at Marian, then motioned the others over to form a perimeter.
“My lady, you seem to be very well armed, which is suspicious for any citizen traveling to a peaceful moon,” he said, reaching for the pistol on his hip as he stepped back from her. Marian could almost laugh at his assertion that Talula was peaceful. She wanted to snatch the knife from her thigh and cut open his throat, but she smiled and bowed before extending her arms.
“I am sorry, officer, it is an old habit. Though a lady, I have been the victim of assault and the knife I wear is a gift from my late husband … to protect myself, you see. I’m a tiny woman; I cannot possibly pose a threat to one the likes of you. You’re all so muscular and intimidating. You can examine my knife, but I would ask that you return it since it means more to me than life itself.”