by C. F. Harris
“You’re really in the shit now Talia,” I muttered as I pulled my bag up on my shoulder and started down the street. I didn’t care where I was going. I didn’t know where I was going.
All I cared about was putting as much distance between me and Jorav as I could manage, and as fast as my legs could carry me.
“Hey human, how would you like a night with a species who knows what they’re doing in the sack?”
I’d been walking in a daze for so long that I’d lost track of how long I’d been away from the palace or where I was. I couldn’t even get my bearings by looking around. That was the problem with being on the bottom level of a megalopolis with buildings that stretched up to the heavens and blotted out the lazy bloated red star that passed for a sun on this world.
It took me a moment to realize the voice was even directed at me, but when I saw the Livisk, overweight and disgusting even by alien standards, there could be no doubt that he was leering at me.
Just the sort of attention I didn’t need right about now.
“Keep moving if you know what’s good for you buddy,” I growled.
I could’ve kicked myself. Keep moving if he knows what’s good for him? What the hell was I on? I had to remember that I was in the belly of the beast here. This was not the place to grow a backbone. I was supposed to be blending in with the locals.
Around here the locals were a bunch of hunched over slaves who’d had all defiance beaten out of them. At least an overseer didn’t come crawling out of the crowd to give me hell. That would’ve been really bad. As it was aliens and humans were starting to look with a mix of hostility and horror depending on which species was doing the looking.
Damn it.
The fat blue asshole in front of me also didn’t take it that well. His eyes narrowed and his body seemed to sparkle eve though there wasn’t much light down here for his skin to reflect.
“What did you say human?” he snarled. He raised a hand and took a step towards me. “Someone hasn’t taught you to respect your betters!”
His sneer turned to a leer as he got closer and that hand started to come down. “Maybe I’ll teach you how you treat your betters after I treat you some manners, slut!”
Oh no he didn’t. I was really mad now. Mad enough to do something stupid. I wasn’t even mad at this one in particular, though trying to hit me, telling me he was going to teach me a few things, and calling me a slut was enough to really piss me off.
No, more than anything I was pissed off at Livisk males in general. One in particular sitting on top of his massive tower talking about killing all humans. I was mad enough that I wasn’t thinking.
So I did something stupid. Reached into my bag while he was mid swing and pulled out another toy I’d stolen from Jorav when he wasn’t looking. For an alien general he really was terrible about securing his personal weapons. The man was so cocky and arrogant. It was no wonder I’d been able to get close enough to him to stab him back on his ship.
I smiled thinking of that as I pulled out a weapon that was far more menacing than the stun stick I’d used on the soldier back at Jorav’s place. I still didn’t want to upset Jorav by doing something stupid like killing one of his soldiers.
I didn’t have any reluctance about fragging this one. He was just another Livisk, and an asshole at that.
I had the satisfaction of watching his eyes go wide for a moment. Just a moment, then the delightfully deadly ominous hum from the weapon turned to a sizzling crackle as a blast of charged plasma flew out and made contact. He went flying back into a crowd that turned into a screaming mass of aliens and humans running to get away from the obvious weapon.
Of course there was the little problem of discharging that weapon and letting the world know I was carrying. Not smart, Talia. Not smart at all. I turned to run in the hope that I might be able to blend into the crowd and get away before I drew the attention of whatever the hell passed for the authorities around here.
The only problem with that plan was the massive Livisk assassin standing right behind me with an energy weapon of his own drawn. I looked down at it and back up to him.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I said. “I’m surprised you came back for more after the beating I gave you last time.”
The assassin looked me up and down and I shivered as I remembered him pressing up against me in that dark alley. That look wasn’t pleasant. It promised things that the asshole I just shot could only dream of.
“Our glorious sovereign has promised that I may do all sorts of interesting things to you,” he said. “I’ll teach you what it means to be in the hands of a true Livisk. That the weakling Jorav is obviously afraid to do.”
“Like hell you will,” I growled.
I brought my weapon up, but of course it wasn’t going to work. I had to do something though. It was a simple question of timing. I had to bring my weapon up while he already had his pointed at me.
My last thought before everything went bright and then dark was that the emperor had probably won, and now I’d never have a chance to kill the asshole.
Then nothingness took me.
12: Protection
Jorav:
The imperial palace. Home of Livisk power in this galaxy. Home of the emperor. I idly traced my imperial medallion as I thought about an emperor I’d watched grow up.
It provided a very interesting view of politics watching the sovereign growing up from a spoiled child who always got his way to a spoiled adult who brought our people to the brink of ruin to satisfy his silly whims. I should have been loyal to him no matter what, but that had all changed.
Because of Talia.
I growled as I realized the magnitude of the mistake I’d made. I let emotion and my anger at myself over the traitorous thoughts running through my head get the better of me. I’d let my anger wash over Talia and she didn’t deserve that.
I could feel her in my head. I reached out to that small corner of my mind that was her, but it was difficult to get anything more than the vague idea that she was alive. She was shielding me more thoroughly than she ever had before.
That was worrying. I thought about the shocked look on her face when I’d roared at her. The way her mind had been filled with terror. I burned with the shame of what I’d done to my mate.
I wasn’t worthy of her.
I focused again on that small corner of my mind that was Talia. It was comforting knowing that she was out there even if she would likely be extremely angry with me if I tried to find her.
I didn’t care. I was a man of action. I hadn’t gotten to where I was by never taking a risk, and I wasn’t going to start hiding now. Not from a human woman. Not from my own shame. I needed to find her and make this better.
I glanced at the palace one final time. It was massive with a steady stream of traffic moving in, out, and around it. Certainly more power rested there with the emperor than many could imagine, but I’d seen war. I knew it had only been less than a century since the emperor was restored.
Perhaps it was time for a change in government again. I understood the humans did it through a ridiculous practice of counting what everyone on their planet who’d performed military service wanted their government to do.
The process was far messier on my world.
I reached out and touched a communication panel on my desk. It opened a channel to all the speakers in the suite. Talia could block herself off from me, but she wouldn’t be able to ignore every communication panel in the place talking to her at full volume.
“Talia. I would speak with you.”
I waited for a moment. Another moment. If she was going to come to me then I wanted her to do it under her own free will. If I forced her to come to me at the point of an energy weapon held by one of my soldiers then I would be no better than those of my people who made my stomach turn in disgust.
She didn’t come. I growled. Why did that infernal woman have to be so frustrating at all times? There were times, particularly when she w
as pointing one of my weapons at me or using it on me, that I thought she’d been sent to test me. A true woman with a warrior spirit, so unlike my former wife who’d always been more concerned with useless politics than getting into a scrap.
I suppose Talia was the proof of that ancient Livisk maxim that one should be wary of getting what one has always desired.
Still no response from her. Well then. She was in my building. That meant I could use the sensors to find her even if she was trying to hide from the link. I hit a couple of buttons to activate the scanner and took a moment to remember the pass code. This was usually something I had one of my underlings handle.
Finally the scanner came up, but no humans in the building. I frowned. That was very odd. I preferred not making use of human slaves so Talia should be the only one showing up when I ran a scan. Why was there nothing?
I had a sinking feeling as I got up and stepped out of the office. On a whim I stopped by a small painting that hid a weapons panel behind it and entered my pass code there as well. When it opened I saw that several more weapons had gone missing.
Damnation. That woman claimed she couldn’t read Livisk script but she was clever enough to figure out my pass code and get into my personal weapons locker? Again?
I set my jaw. Worry warred with fury. Even if I apologized to her the simple fact remained that I’d also been far too lenient with her recently. This had to stop.
When I stepped out of the office I had another surprise. Most of the suite was a massive open area with rooms running around the edge in a ring. On the far end from my office was an elevator that led down to the ground level. An elevator that had a massive charred hole blasted into it.
“What have you done, Talia?” I breathed.
I opened a channel to security down at the entrance. “What’s going on down there?”
No reply. Damn. I did some fiddling with the panel and brought up a video feed. It was cracked and filled with static, and I didn’t see a soldier at all. I felt my third heart dropping lower in my torso. What had Talia done? She’d never tried outright escape before. She’d cajoled me. Bullied me into letting her out.
Never this, though.
That shame burned brighter. I’d forced my mate away. Scared her to the point that she would rather make an ill-advised escape attempt than spend any more time around me. An escape attempt that was even more ill-advised right now considering there would be assassins out there crawling through the city around my tower waiting for a chance to spring on her.
The soldiers I had on protection detail were there as much to keep trouble out as they were to keep Talia in. If she was out there in the city that meant she was in danger. Terrible danger. Danger that she obviously didn’t appreciate since she’d run as far and as fast as she could.
This was all my fault, but I could fix it.
As though to punctuate my shame and my blame something happened with the link. Talia was doing a very good job of covering up whatever she was doing or wherever she was going, but something happened to drop all of her barriers for a moment, then everything went dark. It was as though a switch had been flipped in my head.
She was gone.
I didn’t think it was possible for my lower heart to sink any more than it already had, but it did in that moment. For a panicked moment I thought that darkness meant she was gone. I’d felt something very familiar to it on the fateful day when my first wife had been weighed in the scales of battle and judged unworthy by the warrior spirit.
Only this wasn’t quite the same. I still felt the connection, even if it felt like it was a connection to nothing. I could only hope I wasn’t imagining things and that wasn’t wishful thinking on my part.
Either way a communication disruption could mean only one thing. One of the emperor’s errand boys had tracked down my mate and now who knew what they were doing with her.
I growled as I moved back to the small armory I kept up here. It was nothing compared to some of the many armories I had throughout my tower, but I felt the need to hold a weapon in my hand. There was something soothing about having the ability to deal swift death in my hands.
I always had that ability with my bare hands, of course, but something told me having a bit of range was going to be useful in this fight. I hefted the largest weapon I had. It probably would have taken two hands for Talia to handle it, but I could easily hold its weight in one.
I stepped back into my office as I felt the depth of my failure. I looked out across the city towards the imperial palace again, but this time I didn’t feel the tug of a false loyalty. I knew now that Talia had always been the one I was pledged to, my oaths to the emperor be damned, but it took the possibility of losing her to make that clear to me.
Something else was clear. The way she immediately went unconscious could only mean that she was hit with some sort of neural disruptor. The sort of thing that could only be caused by an energy weapon.
That cowardly dog sitting on his throne was breaking a tradition more ancient even than the tradition of swearing fealty to his false throne built on lies. I wanted to travel to the palace right now and strike him down where he stood, but if I did that I might not save Talia.
“Quite the difficult situation, isn’t it?” a voice spoke next to me.
I wheeled around, my weapon drawn, and didn’t lower it when I realized that I was staring at a disembodied head being projected into the room from the window. I glanced out and saw a drone that had stuck itself to the window so that it could send sound vibrations through the transparent aluminum surface as it projected the assassin’s head in front of me.
I should have allowed Talia to kill this one when we had the chance.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Simple. Your life and the life of your mate. It’s what I’ve been commanded to deliver to our sovereign.”
“Your own life was forfeit the moment you used a forbidden weapon on her during the mating challenge,” I spat.
The assassin shook his head. “Do you really think that’s what this is about?”
My shoulders slumped. “No. I don’t.”
I’d come to that realization far too late. Talia had been right all along. She tried to warn me and I’d ignored her. I’d ignored far too much that she’d tried to tell me, and now she might pay for my mistake with her life.
“Good. I knew you were a smart one,” the assassin said. “I’ve been looking forward to testing myself against you for quite some time now. I requested this task from the emperor.”
“You’ll discover that challenging me is a quick way to a swift death,” I said.
“Perhaps, but the glory of testing myself against you will make it a wonderful task indeed,” he said.
I nodded. That was a motive I could understand even if I didn’t approve given the circumstances. “Very well. May your death be as glorious as you hope.”
“This really is best, Jorav,” the assassin said. “Better for you to die in combat now before you further shame yourself with this farce with the human.”
“Is that from the emperor? Because if you’ll recall he’s the one who bonded me with the human in the first place,” I said.
The assassin’s projection shifted slightly. I got the feeling that he’d just shrugged, but the projector only picked up his head so it was difficult to be sure.
“Perhaps. I will extract whatever measure of glory I can from you before you completely ruin your reputation,” I said.
“And naturally I will find no glory in killing a sneaking creature such as yourself, but I’ll shame myself by fighting you if I must.”
If that irritated my opponent he didn’t give any sign of it. He nodded as though he expected it. Any assassin would have to know the low regard his profession was held in for a society where meeting your enemies in open battle was held in the highest.
“You’ll find coordinates waiting for you,” he said. “Come there and we will be done with this one way or another.”
&n
bsp; “It will be done with your death,” I said.
I raised my weapon and squeezed off several shots at the drone. The first blast sent cracks through the window, and the second went through and hit the drone causing a small explosion that made an even larger hole in the transparent aluminum.
I held myself against the wind that buffeted me as the atmosphere of the room rushed out to meet the thinner atmosphere on the other side. A moment later a force field leapt into place covering the hole and I could stop holding myself.
Weapons. Armor. I needed it all. I didn’t care that they were weapons that technically weren’t allowed in the mating challenge. I didn’t care that I wasn’t supposed to intercede on Talia’s behalf during the mating challenge.
The emperor had broken the laws first, and he would learn the hard way that it wasn’t a good idea to give me an excuse to ignore our laws.
13: Captive
Talia:
I woke up in a strange room. Not that it was too worrying that I was in a strange room. I seemed to be making a habit of waking up in strange surroundings lately. Then I remembered the circumstances that led to me blacking out in the first place.
The assassin.
Okay then. Maybe it wasn’t a good thing that I was waking up in a strange room. Still, it could’ve been worse. I could’ve not woken up at all. Not that I ever would’ve known.
I felt for the mental link to Jorav. It was there and for a surprise he wasn’t blocking me out. Lately I’d only had a sense that he was still there. Otherwise he’d been completely walled off and I’d done the same. Even though I could feel him out there, though, I couldn’t get more than a general sense of where he was.
Huh. Well I guess that was one part of the bond figured out. If he was far enough away we couldn’t do the whole thought sharing thing. That was good to know. Talk about a terrible fucking time and way to figure it out.
“So what do we do now?” I asked. “Is this the part where you threaten me? Tell me that I’m the only way to get at Jorav or something? Because it’s going to get really boring if you’re doing the typical villain rant like that.”