by Tristan Vick
“You’re … shitting on me…” Ellia said, trying to copy Jegra’s earlier use of the idiom. Jegra laughed.
“No. I shit on you not,” she replied, deliberately using it in the way Ellia had so as to not make her feel bad. After all, she was still learning. “Their penises actually fold up into the cervix and only come out if you reach in and pry them out. But, sure enough, a fully functioning male organ tucked right alongside their women bits.”
“Can one female impregnate another female?” she asked.
“You know,” Jegra mused, scratching her chin. “I forgot to ask. They don’t have testicles, however, so maybe they don’t produce sperm. Although, I’m not entirely sure. But the moment I find out, I’ll let you know.”
By the look on Ellia’s face, she was really beginning to get into the conversation. And that’s exactly what Jegra had hoped for. She wanted Ellia to let her guard down just long enough to let her real personality out.
Jegra didn’t care about the façade of the dutiful servant, she wanted to know the personality behind the mask.
“Please, forgive my boldness, mistress. But have you ever let any of the Dagon women mount you?” Ellia asked in a soft whisper, leaning in so as to keep their conversation as confidential as possible–even though they were completely alone in her private quarters aboard her very own starship.
“One,” Jegra said, smiling as she recollected Cassera fondly. “She’s kind of a stubborn Dagon. Really uptight, if you know what I mean, kind of a tree up her ass. And she’s brutally honest with how she feels.”
“I suppose brutal honesty in a culture dedicated to lying to one another as a form of social grace would be refreshing.”
“It is,” she replied. “I ought to know. Nobody lies more than my husband, Emperor Dakroth.”
“The woman,” Ellia continued. “Do you miss her?” Ellia continued rubbing Jegra’s shoulders as they gossiped.
Jegra closed her eyes and let the water cascade down her chest. “I do miss her. And, if I wasn’t married to that ass-hat Rhadamanthus Dakroth, I could easily see myself marrying Cassera Van Danica Amelorak.”
All of a sudden Ellia stopped massaging Jegra’s neck. Realizing something was the matter, Jegra turned around and looked over at the girl. She wore a startled look on her face and slowly drew back as though she were afraid of Jegra. If that wasn’t bad enough, Jegra noticed tears gushing out of her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Jegra asked. “Is it something I said?”
“That woman, the one you just mentioned,” Ellia hissed through clenched teeth, “destroyed my family’s colony on the moon Novac when I was but a child.”
“My God,” Jegra gasped, appalled by Ellia’s terrible news regarding Cassera’s cruelty. “I had no idea.”
“My parents and little brother were vaporized in an unwarranted attack on Nyctan’s furthest moon. The official excuse was that they blew up a long-distance communications array that was supposedly tracking Dagon fleet deployments. But that was a lie. I grew up on Novac. There was nothing there but simple farmers and ore diggers. People trying to make a living the best they could in the harsh end of the system.”
“I’m sorry,” Jegra apologized. She didn’t know what else to say. Cassera was her friend. But this … this merciless act of cruelty was unconscionable.
“How can you love a woman like that?” Ellia asked, her voice sounding awfully condemnatory. Her hands palpably shook with rage as her hard gaze burned with a smoldering fury that hadn’t died down after all these years. The grudge she’d been harboring against the Dagons forced her emotional anger to come boiling to the surface.
“I…” Jegra’s voice faded. She didn’t have any answers that would appease Ellia or make her feel better about what had happened to her family. “Thanks for the massage,” Jegra said in a firm, commanding tone. “You may be excused.”
Ellia shot her a disapproving glance, bowed dutifully, and quickly scurried off. Her cheeks glowed with anger as she stormed out of the room, fists balled up tight.
Jegra let out an exasperated sigh and pressed her forehead against the glass shower wall and let the water beat down on her back.
The more she learned about the Dagons the more it seemed to her that they were the bad guys in this section of the galaxy. And here she was, married to their supreme leader, and in love with another who, as she had just learned, also so happened to be a cold-blooded killer and tyrant. A murderer of women and children.
What did this say about herself, she wondered. Ellia was not mistaken. If Jegra could so casually fall in love with a person like Cassera, then she had to have something seriously wrong with her. That much was clear to her by now. But could she be fixed? Or would she just continue down this dark path until she self-destructed?
Jegra chased the thought out of her mind and quickly set to task figuring out her next strategy.
She turned off the faucet and the water drizzled to a stop. Suddenly, it all became clear in her mind and she smiled at her own reflection in the glass wall of the shower stall.
She reached up with her finger and drew the letter “J” on the steamy glass of the shower wall. Then, wiping it away in one swipe of the palm of her hand, she smiled. Emperor Dakroth wouldn’t even know what had hit him.
Ellia reappeared in the doorway and bowed. Jegra looked over at her with a blank gaze. “Mistress, Sir Galahad wishes me to inform you that the Dagon fleet has come into range of our scanners and he’ll be awaiting your presence on the bridge.”
“Excellent,” Jegra replied. “Tell him that I’ll be there shortly.”
Ellia bowed deeply and then started to pull away when she stopped herself. “Mistress?”
Jegra looked up but said nothing.
“I just wanted to apologize for earlier. I was out of line.”
“No, you weren’t,” Jegra said. “You were wronged. And I swear to you, Ellia, I will get vengeance for both you and your family. And for all the Nyctan families my malevolent war-mongering husband has ruined.”
23
Effervescent fireballs plumed out of the Nyctan battlecruiser in the distance. Smashing both fists down onto the arms of his command chair, Emperor Dakroth leaned forward and growled. “Who fired that shot?”
“It wasn’t us, sire,” the officer below him stated, mashing frantically at the keys to keep up with the readings.
“I don’t care who it wasn’t. I want you to find out who it was,” he snarled.
Dakroth stood up and paced back and forth in front of his chair. Turning back toward the viewscreen, he gazed out at the Nyctan fleet hanging against the backdrop of a purple nebula and a spackle of white stellar dots which spread out into a black void as far as the eye could see.
The second Nyctan ship from the middle was igniting on fire from a disrupter blast that supposedly came from one of Dakroth’s ships. This enraged him since he hadn’t given the order to fire. What’s more, this unfortunate incident ended the ceasefire between the Dagon and Nyctan empires. Now it would devolve into a free-for-all fire fight. And his fleet was already stretched thin as it was.
“Sir, the lead enemy cruiser is hailing us,” the officer said, touching an earpiece.
Emperor Dakroth’s eyes flashed red and he growled, “Put them through.”
Upon seeing Jegra’s face appear on the viewscreen, Dakroth stumbled back and fell into his chair. His face when white as he watched with slack-jawed awe at the woman sitting before him.
As he stared, mouth gaping, it almost appeared to him as though Jegra seemed downright pleased by his complete shock and dismay. She flashed him a glimpse of an imperial yet unmistakably haughty smile and then casually uncrossed her legs and stood up to greet him.
“Hi, sweetie-pie. Did you miss me?” Jegra asked in her most playful and desirous manner.
“Wha—what’s all this … wait … what? What’s happening right now?” Dakroth was, perhaps for the first time in his life, utterly speechless. Rising back to hi
s feet, he demanded to know what was going on. “I don’t know what kind of twisted game the Nyctans are playing, but I demand you tell me right this instant. As your emperor, I command you!”
“And, as your empress, I’ll tell you what’s going on,” Jegra said with a sneer. “Your fleet just fired on my fleet. I’m the Empress of Dagon, and rule 400 and 20 dash J makes it quite clear that should a Dagon vessel accidentally fire on another Dagon vessel in a time of war, the person who fired the shot shall forfeit his rank and title, hand over his vessel, and turn himself over to their Sub Commander to be officially court-martialed.”
“You have actually read all 1700 codes of the Dagon intergalactic trade and citizenry laws and bylaws?”
“I was going to be the new empress, wasn’t I? Seemed like something I should know.”
Dakroth flew into a rage and pointed his finger at the officer in front of him and fired off a laser blast. The officer fell out of his chair, his uniform smoking from the blast. No sooner had he hit the ground, however, another officer came over to relieve him.
“I want to know who fired on that vessel and I want to know now!” he growled, pacing back and forth in front of the viewscreen.
“Um, sir…” the new officer said, his voice quivering with fear. “Our internals scans are now saying we were the ones who fired that shot.”
“Impossible!” Dakroth roared.
“Sweetums!” Jegra called out in a trill voice from the monitor. “I believe you owe me your ship. And, also, your resignation as Emperor of the Dagon Empire.”
“You traitorous hag!” Dakroth shouted, pointing his glowing finger at the view screen. “If you were here now I’d laser my way into that scheming, no good, two-faced skull of yours and turn your brains to soup!”
“So, is that a yes, then?” Jegra said, sighing out of the corner of her mouth and checking her nails out of boredom. Dakroth’s tirades were often tiresome and this one was no exception. She’d lost interest the moment he resorted to petty threats.
At the same time, in her other hand, she fiddled with a black data stick which she’d been holding onto since she’d made the call to his ship. It was the same memory stick that Grendok had given her in the back alleys of Mardok. And, yes, she had read every single file twice over.
“Nice try. But you’re not aboard any Dagon vessel and you’re not a ranking officer in my fleet, my dear. No Dagon would ever get caught wearing that ridiculous Nyctan armor. You’re a traitor, plain and simple. And the rules of the law, well, they don’t apply to traitors.” He was practically frothing at the mouth, his red eyes wild with rage.
“So, I’ll take that as a no, then.” Jegra sat back down in her chair, leaned back, and crossed her legs. She still fiddled with the data stick in her fingers, twiddling it between her forefinger and thumb, taunting him with the fact that she had all his secrets right in the palm of her hand.
“Do you know what this is?” she said, holding up the data stick for him to see.
“No, what is it?” he snarled.
“It’s all your secrets, my love. It’s the fact that you have sequenced my genome without my knowledge or consent. It’s the blueprints for your new destroyer that’s being built at the secret facility at Cordova that you didn’t want anyone to know about. And it’s the shield frequencies for all your ships.”
Panicked, the emperor spun around and shouted, “Blow that back-stabbing whore out of the sky!”
Jegra blew him a kiss and, leaning forward in her chair, replied with a cold and cool, “See you in hell, darling.”
With that, the screen went black.
No sooner had their viewscreens gone to black than a barrage of green and red disrupter blasts erupted between the vessels as both fleets began their relentless exchange of fire. A flamboyant reminded to all the galaxy that this was the lover’s quarrel to end all lover’s quarrels. But, it’s as the saying went, Jegra felt. Truly, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Or, for that matter, a woman betrayed by her lover, given up to her enemies, and left for dead.
“Mistress,” one of her officers called out to her. She turned her attention back to the matters at hand and shot him a look that urged him to come out with it. “They’re already modulating their shield frequencies in an attempt to dampen our disruptor fire.”
“That’s quite all right,” she said, sliding back into her chair. “I only wanted to rattle his cage.” Jegra reclined in her chair, arched her back, and uncrossed then recrossed her legs again, repositioning the top onto the bottom and vice versa.
The look on Dakroth’s face was worth the vid-call alone. The man didn’t handle pressure well. Besides, if she had used the frequencies to decimate his fleet it would have given away the fact that her attack was pre-meditated. No. It had to look as though the blasts had come from him. It had to look like he was the one who’d started the war.
Still fuming aboard his ship, Dakroth paced some more before the view of the battle. “Get the vice admiral on the viewer,” Dakroth ordered. He couldn’t stop pacing as he waited for the return call.
Finally, the viewscreen came on and Danica swiveled around in her chair to face him.
“Why have we engaged the Nyctans?” she asked, obviously upset by this turn of events.
“It was Jegra,” he informed her. “Somehow she’s finagled her way up to the top of the Nyctan chain of command and is leading the imperial fleet with her own invasion force.”
“Impossible,” she said, taken aback. Jegra was as tenacious as they came, but this was too fantastic to believe. Which meant, in all likelihood, it was true.
“That’s what I said!” Dakroth balked.
“What about project Zeta?”
“For now, we’ll bide our time. We’ll engage the Nyctans with the full force of the Dagon armada, and when they are weakened, I’ll be in position to crush them once and for all.”
“Are you sure it’s wise to take on the Nyctans now? We’ve lost our flagship and our secret shipyard in less than a month’s time. A full assault on the Nyctans will be more damaging to us than to them. If our projections are accurate, our fleet will be diminished by thirty percent while they will only loose about eighteen percent. You’d be giving up the strategic advantage in the system.”
“You just carry out my orders and let me worry about the casualties of war. With Zeta ready for launch, we’ll make up the difference of that ten percent in no time.”
“And if we should lose?”
“We won’t,” he reassured her. But the truth was, this was going to be the fight that changed the tide or broke the empire’s back. Even so, he wasn’t planning on going down as the emperor who saw the fall of Dagon. Dakroth had one more trick up his sleeve: Project Zeta.
But that was a last resort–an untested, experimental biological weapon. Something he was sure the Nyctans would appreciate. Something that would have them merrily singing their sacred religious hymns all the way to their destruction.
As thrilled as the thought of laying the Nyctan armada to waste made him, he knew that right now, at this very moment, they had the upper hand. And, perhaps worse still, his darling empress, Jegra Alakandra, had found a way to seize the entire military might of the Nyctans. Now she was coming for him. And that revelation didn’t fill him with joy, seeing as he had practically abused her at every turn.
Control. That was his entire game with Jegra. Seeing who could control the other. She had her sex. Her strength. Her intoxicating methods of seduction. He had his cruelty and manipulation. But there was a lot she resented him for; he’d taken so much and given nothing back.
In his mind, that was the most dangerous kind of woman. One who had nothing to lose and everything to gain by his death. And like a fool, he went and married her.
If he would have waited, he could have seized the opportunity at Cordova without having made her his empress. But even trying to cover up the fact by leaking the fake news of her death backfired in his face the moment she came onto the vi
ewscreen. Half his crew saw that broadcast. There was no getting the Vorgathian cat back into the bag, so to speak.
“You called for me, your majesty?”
Dakroth spun in his chair to find a woman with red skin kneeling before him, head bowed. She looked up at him and he smiled. It was his favorite assassin for hire. The same woman he’d hired to kill Abethca.
“Ishtar Bantu,” he said cheerfully. “I have a highly classified mission for you. It appears my darling wife somehow managed to survive her shuttle crash. Now, she’s aboard a Nyctan destroyer.”
Bantu rose up and adjusted her black body armor then gave him a stern look. “You want me to infiltrate a Nyctan cruiser and kill the empress?” she asked.
“Yes,” he snarled through his teeth. “Can you do it?”
“It won’t be cheap.”
“How much?”
“I want thirty million credits, unrestricted access through Dagon space, and I want my entire digital profile to be erased indefinitely.”
“You want to be a ghost?”
“Only a ghost could pull off what you’re asking for.”
“Fine,” Dakroth said with a wave of his hand. “Have it your way.”
Ishtar Bantu nodded her chin in a subtle display of reverence and then spun and started to march away. As she went, he called out to her.
“Oh, and one more thing. I want you to make it excruciatingly painful.”
A malicious grin spread across Ishtar’s black painted lips and, without so much as a word, she left the bridge to carry out her wicked task.
Emperor Dakroth put his arms behind his back and turned to gaze back out at the firefight. Green and red lasers crisscrossed in the space between both fleets. The lead ships took the brunt of the disrupter blasts. It was only a matter of time before their shields began to fail and his ships began to burst in a daisy chain of epic explosions which would light up the sky like fireworks.