by Tristan Vick
Once Jegra had finished dressing, Danica led her to the observation deck of the Skywend. The semicircular room had a crescent-shaped sofa that was built right into the floor. It faced a large glass viewing portal and allowed you to relax as you took in the view. Walking around to the front of the sofa, Jegra looked out at the vista to see a glorious blue and green planet hanging against a star spackled swath of endless space.
“Welcome to the Nyctan homeworld,” Danica said, saddling up beside Jegra who stood enthralled by the beauty of the verdant planet.
“It’s beautiful,” Jegra whispered.
Danica leaned into Jegra and rested her head on her girlfriend’s shoulder.
“It pales in comparison to Dagon,” Danica jested. “But who am I to judge? A lush planet is a lush planet.”
“I haven’t told you this yet,” Jegra said, resting her cheek on Danica’s head as they stood next to one another in a cozy embrace. “But, this new look of yours, is totally hot.”
“I appreciate you saying that,” Danica said. She tossed her blue and purple ombre hair over her shoulder and squinted at Jegra. “But you do realize you made my boobs too big, right?”
“It’s nothing to what I’d planned,” Jegra admitted, a slight laugh escaping from her lips. “But I didn’t want you pissed at me for the next decade.”
Danica ribbed Jegra with her elbow. “Bitch,” she teased.
The sound of the doors opening drew their attention away from the glittering panorama of sparkling oceans and shining clouds. They turned to find Sanakar and Estriel standing in the doorway. Both of them gave Jegra a grave look, as if to say it was time to follow the Pied Piper and see where his haunting melodies took her.
“It’s time,” Sanakar said.
Jegra nodded in confirmation and turned to leave. When Danica moved with her, she stopped and looked at her inquisitively as if to ask what she was doing.
“I’m coming too,” Danica said.
“It’s too dangerous,” Jegra said.
Sanakar stood off to the side nodding, as if to reaffirm what Jegra was saying.
Danica’s glabella creased with determination and she shot Jegra a hard look that said she was coming whether Jegra liked it or not. End of debate.
“Fine,” she said, caving in to Danica’s obduracy.
“Consider this a test run. If the Administratrix cannot recognize me, then Dakroth certainly won’t either.”
“If she does?” Jegra asked.
“Then we’re screwed. And I did all this for nothing.” Danica struck a pose and waved her hands across her body as though she were about to do a striptease.
“Sub Commander,” Estriel cut in, clearing his throat in a polite attempt to draw her attention back to the task at hand. “A shuttle is coming to pick us up. It will be here shortly.”
Jegra looked over at Sanakar and Estriel. They stared at her with their oversized, black Nyctan eyes. Other than the strange demonic look they sported, they seemed like ordinary people to her. The more time Jegra spent among other extraterrestrials, the more she felt like she fit right in.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Nyctan for the first time,” she said as they all exited the observation deck and headed down the corridor together.
“I’m sure you will love it,” Sanakar replied.
After a short jaunt down several intersecting corridors, they came to an airlock and watched as the Nyctan craft docked with the Skywend.
With a hiss the airlock door rolled back and Jegra about had a heart attack and staggered back.
“Galahad?” she gasped.
The man standing before her was the spitting image of Galahad. He was even a Knight.
“Apologies, Sub Commander,” the man said, taking a reverent bow. “But you mistake me for my brother.”
“Brother?” Jegra repeated, jarred by the revelation that Galahad had an identical twin brother. She shot Danica a confounded look only to find the same shocked expression plastered across Danica’s face.
“I’m sorry that my brother is dead, but at least he died with honor, defending the empire.”
“That he did,” Jegra said. “Sir?”
“I beg your pardon. The name is Lance Bishop. Knight fourth class.”
“Well, Sir Lance,” Jegra said, boarding the shuttle. “Best not keep the Administratrix waiting.”
The crew aboard, the Nyctan shuttle broke away from the Skywend and turned about. The majestic blue and green orb of Nyctan loomed in the distance.
Jegra had read that it was an exoplanet one and a half times larger than Earth, but with roughly the same gravity, and had more green than blue. Although there was a fair amount of both beneath the swirling white clouds. And now she was able to see it with her own two eyes.
Sure enough, it lived up to all the hype. It may even have been a more beautiful planet than Earth, and she was dying to just spend a month on solid ground again. Maybe do some hiking. Do some sightseeing and touristy stuff before jumping back into the fray.
The shuttle entered the atmosphere and began its descent. After breaking through the cloud cover, a lush landscape opened up before them and in the distance a grand city–the capital city, Nyla’Tek of Nyctan.
Lance Bishop brought the shuttle down in front of the Imperial Military Headquarters. Powering down the craft, he gestured for everyone to step outside.
Jegra was the first to exit. But what she found waiting for her caught her entirely off guard.
Anaïs Nin, wearing her glossy black battle armor, stood in front of the shuttle, her sword drawn. At least two dozen armed guards stood alongside her. To either side of her were two Knights, plasma blades humming in the broad light of day. Every single one of Anaïs Nin’s soldiers’ blasters were trained on her.
“Sub Commander Jegra Alakandra,” Anaïs Nin said, her voice as cold as icicles. “Under Code 14 of the Nyctan military charter, I hereby place you under arrest for treason.”
32
Jegra stood in her cell looking out at a large cylindrical complex of prison cells stacked on top of one another like giant rings as far as the eye could see up or down. It had an organic feel, however, like the architectural designs of Zaha Hadid and reminded her of the Galaxy SOHO in Beijing, China, or the BMW headquarters in Munich, Germany, if those places had been transformed into prisons. It was the most extensive holding facility she’d ever seen.
There were no stairs or elevators, no way in or out, except via the wafer-like hover platform which shuttled guards up and down on their shifts.
“You think an oracle might have been able to see this coming,” Jegra griped, tapping the shield that concealed her.
A blue glow rippled with hexagonally linked energy and then quickly faded. The shield sent a strong electrical shock through her body, but being as strong as she was, she merely absorbed it. Anyone else would have dropped to the ground as though they had been tazed.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Sanakar said, sighing disappointedly.
She sat on a large white sofa that was placed in the quite sizable cell. A televid monitor showing the gladiator fights was on the wall. Like Jegra, she had on only what appeared to be white boxers and a white T-shirt that showed a lot of midriff.
Apparently, the outfits were designed so that prisoners couldn’t conceal anything, yet be as comfortable as possible at the same time. This theme ran through the entire aesthetic of the Nyctan penitentiary: practical minimalist design, comfort.
A guard, dressed all in black and wearing a smooth black mask which concealed his face, stepped into view and stared at Jegra for a moment. Then, in a disgruntled voice, he growled, “Step back.”
Jegra turned to look at her two roommates. Both Sanakar and Danica were with her. On her world, you’d never get placed in a cell with your friends. They’d be too worried about collusion and the off chance of a prison break. But the Nyctans prided themselves in their state of the art security measures so much they weren’t worried about it. The pr
ison was, for the lack of a better word, inescapable. So, as odd as it seemed to her, it was allowed.
Their prison cell, decked out in all white, was quite roomy. Nothing like the prisons on Earth. In addition to their comfortable sofa and televid monitor, there was a small aluminum dining table with four matching aluminum chairs, one king sized bed, and a food replicator which allowed them each three meals a day.
In the far corner of the cell was an aluminum toilet, no doors or curtain, but there was a small concrete partition which separated it from the rest of the room and blocked the view of the outside cells, giving the user a modicum of privacy.
Danica sat at the table and sipped a cup of tea. Although meals were limited to only meal times, beverages were allowed all day long. Crossing her right leg over her left knee, she bopped her foot under the table as she read a book on an e-reader.
Sanakar reclined on the sofa watching B-ranked gladiators duke it out on some distant moon. Unlike Jegra’s triple A rating, which she got from defeating the reigning champion in her very first match, these gladiators were ranked by number of wins.
Recently, Jegra had also learned that fights to the death were barred on most worlds. Luckily for her, however, she got stuck on the psychopath Rhadamanthus Dakroth’s moon Thessalonica. The bloodiest moon in the galaxy, as it was known. Also called the Jewel of Dagon. Of course, she later learned that the official gem of Dagon was a blood red sapphire. The irony of the namesake had not escaped her.
One of the reasons Thessalonica had the highest views in the system was because Dakroth allowed for all the violence and gore that excited that carnal bloodlust in its viewers.
Even though death matches were outlawed on most worlds, a B-ranked or C-ranked gladiator could request a bout at Thessalonica against the reigning champion. Against Jegra.
But she had been out of the picture for several months now, and with the Thessalonica arena destroyed and out of commission while a new arena was being built, there was no dominant contender. The vid-feeds merely focused on the up and comers from other systems and generated a scoring system to rank them all.
Jegra frowned as the top ranked gladiator came onto the screen. He was a Zarkonian, armor plated, armadillo looking fellow who could turn into a ball. Although she knew that she could boot him into the sun, the other contestants seemed to have their hands tied with the creature.
“Are you just going to sit there and watch televid all day?” Jegra asked, glaring at Sanakar.
“They only give us three channels. A weather channel, which seems quite useless being in a place like this. A cooking channel, which only makes me hungry. And the gladiator fights.”
“I thought oracles were supposed to meditate and stuff,” Jegra said, hinting strongly at the fact that her roommate’s televid watching habit was driving her up the wall.
“Only part of the day,” Sanakar said, brushing her reddish colored hair across her shoulder.
Danica looked up from her book. “Honestly, I thought they’d treat their oracle with more reverence than this.”
“I was the one who prophesied Jegra’s coming. I’m the one who saw her standing beneath the golden halo of the Gilded Master. But oracles have been wrong before.” She sighed a lengthy sigh as if to suggest it couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t rocket science, after all. It was faith.
“So, are they also among the prisoners of Nyctan’s maximum prison facility?” asked Danica.
“I highly doubt it,” Sanakar reported. “None of the previous oracles put a war criminal into power. For this mistake, I must share in Jegra’s punishment.”
“Dani, you didn’t need to pretend to be my slave.”
“It was the only way I could get on the inside with you. As a slave, I count as your property, and had no choice but to share in your fate.”
“It’s very sweet of you, but I feel you could have served me better on the outside.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said with a wry smile.
Both Sanakar and Jegra turned to Danica and stared at her. She went back to reading her book as though she hadn’t just let on that things were already in motion to have them sprung.
“Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that you know something I don’t?” Jegra asked.
She sighed and put down her book again. “If you must know, Raven felt that if the administratrix was going to save her own neck she’d need to offer up a scapegoat. Who better to pin the failure of the campaigns on than a falsely appointed emissary? The Dagon Empress who lost the battle at Sector B-13 against the dreaded emperor Dakroth? Don’t be naïve, Jegra. Of course, it was going to be you. It was a set up from the start. Now, the cruel bitch gets to go free and you’re paying for her crimes. Which is why Raven and I put together this little rescue plan early this morning.”
Unable to help herself, Jegra rushed over to Danica, hoisted her up into her arms, and gave her a bear hug. Setting her down again, she placed her hands on either side of Dani’s face and bent down and kissed her.
“Did I ever tell you that you’re the best?”
“Only every night,” Danica teased.
“Oh, getting feisty, are we?”
“I thought I’d try to let my hair down. Get rid of the stiff soldier persona. Play the part of the horny slave girl.”
“I like the confidence,” said Jegra, nudging Dani with her elbow. “It’s sexy on you.”
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Sanakar interrupted. “But I don’t think we’ll be getting out of here anytime soon.”
“What makes you say that?” Danica asked.
She cleared her throat and then nodded at the entrance. To their surprise, there were five guards standing around Raven Nightguard, who was wearing the trademark, prison issued white boxers and T-shirt.
They turned off the shield to the cell and shoved her into the room with the other three women. Then they flipped back on the power and the blue energy of the shield rematerialized behind her with a flicker.
Jegra opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again rethinking what she needed to say, then opened it again. “Raven? What are you doing here?”
“It seems there’s been a change of plans.”
“No, shit,” Jegra replied, feeling like things kept taking a turn for the worse.
“What happened?” Sanakar asked, offering Raven a seat next to her on the white sofa.
“Using a skeleton key decryption hack, Gyllek hacked into the prison’s firewall via a back door and found a system flaw in the facility’s design that can be exploited. All you need is a level eight hacker on the inside to pull it off.”
“You’re a level eight hacker?” Danica balked.
“Level ten,” Raven said with a grin, tapping her temple as if to highlight the genius underneath. Her electronic implants lit up like veins and pulsed rhythmically until they faded again.
“Of course, you are.” Danica rolled her eyes and looked away.
She didn’t have a leg to stand on, however, because now she was a mod, too. She knew that allowing her prejudice to show only made her look petty and hypocritical. But she really couldn’t stand Raven Nightguard. The woman was just so damn righteous that it was aggravating.
Raven went over to the toilet and took the lid off. Reaching into the tank of water, she jostled her hand around and then plucked out a small, plastic device.
“What on Nyctan are you doing?” Sanakar asked.
Raven cracked open the module, then, fiddling with its rather simplistic circuitry a bit, she snapped the plastic lid back into place and placed it back inside the tank.
“As it turns out,” she informed them, “all the flushing mechanisms in this entire facility are digitally regulated. All I did was program the device to tell all the toilets to flush at the same time. This will cause a backup in the pipes and all the toilets in the entire complex will flood simultaneously.”
“So, you’re trying to drown us?” Danica huffed, folding her arms across her chest.
>
“Oh, wait. I think I get it now,” Sanakar said, hopping up onto her knees and leaning into the back of the sofa as she addressed everyone. “You’re going to short circuit all the shields by overpowering the power grid.”
“That’s right,” Raven replied. “The shields are modulated so that when one cell requires more power the system automatically sends more power to it. But if all the shields request more power at the same time due to their contact with the water, then the system will overload and annihilate itself.”
“You girls ready?” Raven asked, reaching over to press the flush button.
Once the water contacted the high-power energy field, the feedback would send enough volts through the liquid to fry anyone standing in it. Not enough to kill them, but enough to give them a good burn. Jegra and Danica climbed up onto the bed so as to avoid the impending electrical surge while Sanakar chose to remain on her own little island of the sofa.
“Here goes nothing,” Raven said. She flushed the toilet and then ran and leapt onto the bed.
The sound of toilets flushing in one explosive outburst mimicked the roar of an enormous waterfall.
Voices cried out in dismay as people’s cells flooded and then there were yelps as prisoners were zapped and stunned.
The lights in the cell flickered and then the shields dropped and everything went dark. The entire facility was offline. Red emergency lighting powered up, but it was battery run. The main power grid remained offline.
“Now!” Raven shouted.
All four women rushed out of the cell and onto the terrace that wrapped itself around the entire inside of the holding level that they were on. But the veranda just wrapped around and came back to them. One giant circle. There was no getting on or off the platform. Not without the central hover disc that acted as an elevator.
Before they could make their grand escape, a guard spotted them. Lighting them up with a flashlight, he pointed a stun-stick at them that spat angry blue arcs of electricity, and yelled, “You there, halt!”