by David Welch
“And why exactly would we set you free, given that you raped us and all?” asked Rex.
“Women cannot rape men, only the other way around,” Vermella snarled. “And you’ll let me go because it’s the only way you’ll ever feel pleasure again.”
“You have a very high opinion of you sexual prowess if you think—” Rex began.
“No, you idiot!” Vermella sneered. “You’re infected. Don’t you get it? I’m a Sirizon.”
She expected a response; it was obvious from the triumphant look on her face. She got nothing, which made her scowl at them.
“You have no idea what I am, do you?” she asked.
“A rapist with some freaky pheromone powers,” Rex replied.
“I’m a Sirizon, a woman of Sirizonia—where the Goddess’s servants lived,” she informed.
“Oh! That type of Sirizon,” Rex said.
“Joke all you want! In a few hours, it won’t seem so funny!” Vermella snapped.
“All right, I’ll humor you. You’re a Sirizon. From the words ‘Siren’ and ‘Amazon,’ right? Smash those two together. So what, you lure men to their doom with your song? Right?”
“No,” she said coolly. She spread her legs, revealing something Rex was, unfortunately, all too familiar with. “Not with my song.”
Rex cocked his head warily. He had a distinct feeling she was talking about more than just using sex to get men to do her bidding.
“There’s a virus in me. My virus. Unique to me. All Sirizons have one,” she explained.
“A virus?” asked Lucius, careful to keep his voice flat and emotionless.
“Yes. A sexually transmitted virus that is now, as we speak, imprinting itself on your brain,” she continued.
“Where is this going?” Rex asked.
She smiled, crossing her legs under her. The triumph and pride lit up her face.
“Where is it going? Oh, let’s see. This virus is inserting itself into the areas of your brain responsible for pleasure. It’s getting in between the nerve cells and blocking signals, the kind of signals responsible for you feeling any type of pleasure, any type of positive emotion. It’s just starting now, but in a few hours it will have made itself at home. And when that happens, everything good in your life will stop. Completely.”
“I see,” Rex said, his voice becoming as flat as Lucius’s. “And why would you do that to a person? Revenge? You hate men, so you want them to never feel happy again?”
“Nothing that simple,” she replied. “There is one thing that will still elicit a pleasure response from your brain.”
“And what is that?” asked Rex.
“Why my pheromones, of course,” answered Vermella. “You’ll be doing anything I ask you to because being near me, close enough to smell my pheromones, is the only thing that will bring you even the slightest bit of joy. You may resist at first. You may even convince yourself that you don’t need to feel pleasure to live. But that never lasts long. And before you know it, you’ll kill that cyborg for me, simply because I asked you to, just like you how you’ll be cutting me out of these bars and begging my forgiveness for putting me here. And you, Mr. Commander, will cry in terror at the mere memory of kicking me.”
She laughed and lay her head back against the wall.
“And don’t think of killing me now either,” she said. “Other men in your position have had that thought. But just because I’m dead, doesn’t mean my virus will be. Kill me, and you’ll just grow more and more miserable.”
“Is that so?” said Rex, his voice lightening a little.
“Yes. Imprinted men have tried to live without me and killed themselves as a result. Life without pleasure and all…”
Rex nodded, pausing to think—or to make Vermella think he was thinking. He sighed heavily and turned to Lucius.
“Well, you heard her, Lu. Guess we better resign ourselves to being her slaves,” he declared dramatically.
“That would seem to be the case,” Lucius replied in his usually grave tone.
“But seriously, this has to be the most enjoyable way to be enslaved ever, you know? How many people get laid before the chains go on,” said Rex with a dark chuckle.
“It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. You will be mine before long,” Vermella declared.
“Oh it’s not a question of belief. I believe you entirely. And this explains why you were so desperate to get on my ship and into my bed. Thought you could stage a nice little coup, eh?”
“I have. The cyborg acts tough, but he submits to you, which means he’s the honorable type and won’t be pulling a gun on you even when he sees you’re obeying my orders. Honorable men don’t like to kill their friends—an exploitable weakness. And somehow I don’t think that blond bitch will be much of a threat.”
“Well, her former master thought that too. Now he’s a bloodstain, so—” Rex explained.
“Well, thanks for that then,” said Vermella. “Warning me ahead of time, maybe you’re turning faster than anticipated.”
“Hardly. ’Cause you see I have an important secret too. Me and Lucius. And it’s a big one,” said Rex.
Vermella gave him a sarcastic smirk and sighed as if tired of him.
“No, no, you’ll want to hear this. See you may be a Sirizon, infused with all sorts of genetically engineered man-enslaving superpowers. But I’m a Terran see, which means I am infused with millions of medical nanobots—just tons of them—running through all the tissues in my body. I’m teeming with the damn things.”
Vermella’s smirk vanished, her face tightening into something both angry and scared at the same time.
“And one of the things these bots do is destroy any abnormal microbes that happen to enter my body. Bacteria, parasites, viruses…they just go up and literally rip them apart,” Rex went on.
“You’re lying,” she spoke.
“’Fraid not. Your little virus was probably destroyed within a few minutes of being absorbed through my skin. And your dreams of making me your little slave went with it.”
Her fists balled and strained against the rebar bent around her wrists.
“And Lucius here, despite his Europan origins, has been a Terran for some time now. He’s got the same bots and everything, so whatever your plan was for him, you can kiss it good-bye,” Rex added.
Vermella seethed in her spot, her eyes staring death at him. Rex now decided it was his turn to smile and did so with great gusto.
“So the question now, Lucius, is what to do with a known rapist and slaver?” said Rex.
“It is an interesting question,” said Lucius.
“Sure is,” said Rex. He paused for a moment and then delivered another hard kick to Vermella’s stomach. She coughed and lurched forward again, nearly retching.
“That’s for forcing yourself on me,” Rex declared, and then turned to Lucius. “You have anything you want to tell her?”
Lucius just stared at her coldly, and then turned and walked away.
“Guess not,” Rex said with a shrug. “You’re lucky he’s not more talkative.”
With that he turned and followed Lucius out of the cargo bay.
***
Barvolomeu squinted as the freighter lifted off, shielding his eyes from the blue-red glow of the engines, and the red fire of the sun as it slowly dipped behind the hills. He was no Uriankhai though he shared the tanned skin tone. He had the round eyes and the bald head of a Malgaresian, though not their stereotypical stature. Instead of being tall, he was stocky, short, and looked like a middle-aged man out for a stroll.
But he was, in fact, a hunter. For thirty years he’d been prowling this section of the quarter, bringing in people with a price on their heads. He didn’t particularly care who was willing to pay the price or why, so long as they paid. Well, that had been the case, at least before she had come into his life—before Vermella.
It was her breathtaking image that filled his mind now. Worry followed with it. She had sent word, from
space no less, that she needed him as backup on a capture. And he had done as she asked. How could he do any less for the love of his life? He’d take on the Terran fleet itself for her!
But now he didn’t know what to do. She had gone onto the freighter with its captain some time ago. She had not come out. He was unsure what this meant. Vermella had captured ships before, without his help. She was actually pretty damn good at it. Had she captured the freighter? Was she now at its controls? And if so why hadn’t she called him, told him to stand down? She usually did that when she needed his help, she was courteous like that.
Barv glanced down at the small tablet on his belt. No messages awaited on the screen. It gnawed at him, like it always did we she was away from him. He didn’t like to be away from her, and he didn’t feel right when she was gone. He knew she had to be away sometimes; she had bounties to hunt just like him. He knew it and accepted it, but at the same time something always felt off when he wasn’t near her—like there was some weight pressing on him, finding every inch of him and it didn’t lift until he could hold her near again…feel her, smell her, hear her whisper naughty things in his ear.
He frowned, spat, and headed for the terminal. He’d been operating out of Kodee Suur for some time, so nobody paid him any heed. He wandered his way toward the operations wing. A bored-looking security guard watched a soap opera projecting from a wrist console. Barv flipped him a silver coin, which the guard caught without looking. Barv kept on walking, coming upon the radar room. The door was half-open; inside was a technician. He sat in front of a bank of computers that lined an entire wall. Radar projections of the surrounding area and the planet itself floated above the banks, red dots representing the myriad vessels moving about the planet.
“What you want?” said the technician.
“That freighter. What do you know about it, and where is it heading?”
“Eh, you know the drill,” the technician spoke.
Barv frowned and dug into his pocket. He removed two silver pieces and plunked them down on the technician’s console. The man picked them up and examined them for a second, looking at them closely until he was satisfied of their authenticity. He turned back to his console, inserting a one-inch-square drive into a slot on the computer. A second later the computer chirped. The technician ejected the chip, and he handed it to Barv.
“All we got on it. Not much, just what they gave us and the direction they left in,” said the technician. “Doesn’t seem like your usual quarry.”
Barv said nothing, just grunted, feeling the tightness in his chest as he held the chip in his hands. He glanced down at his tablet again, hoping against hope that a message had come in the few minutes since he’d last checked.
Nothing.
“Thanks,” he said gruffly.
The technician waved and turned back to his duties. As Barv made his way back down the hall, he pulled the tablet from his belt, held it up to his face, and spoke.
“Begin warming up the engines. I want the ship ready to go as soon as I get there.”
His ship’s computer chirped in affirmation. He slotted the tablet back onto his belt and headed for the tarmac.
One of the major lessons learned by the empire after the Anatolian Reach War was that of subjugation. Their initial invasion was shocking in its rapidity—nobody conquered planets that quickly. But the problems of the blitzkrieg approach soon arose. Putting troops in cities did not equate to conquest. The Terrans on these occupied worlds did not feel beaten, because they weren’t. They picked up their guns and became a guerrilla force, ruling large swaths of countryside, killing millions of imperial warriors, and tens of thousands of noblemen. When the Terran fleets arrived to liberate these worlds, the Europans found themselves fighting on two fronts. Their stubborn refusal to surrender to “rabble” such as the Terrans allowed them to hold out longer than expected, but it did not stop the inevitable.
Their response was twofold. The first was the increased specialization of the Forlorn Hope Brigades, which we’ll examine later on. But the most prominent response was the design and construction of the Bombardment Stations. These massive, flat, square behemoths are the largest warships that have ever been built, though it’s a bit of a stretch to call them “ships.” They are, in fact, space stations with engines attached. Each is four miles on a side, containing vast interior flight decks holding fighters, bombers, corvettes, and landing ships. The undersides are studded with turreted rail-guns and missile launchers, all geared toward blasting a planet into submission. The upper levels above all this weaponry are designed to hold tens of thousands of warriors and the nobles who command them. The tactics theses stations use are simple. When the fleet has secured the space around a planet, you bring in the station and use its weapons to turn the planet’s cities into rubble. Instead of occupying a planet and putting your troops in danger, you simply blast at it until the inhabitants were beaten and knew they were beaten. And if they still didn’t surrender, you simply bombarded them out of existence and then replaced them with your own people. The Europans have learned well the lessons of the last war. And while these bombardment stations represent little threat to a power or superpower with a fleet to defend their space, they are ominously chilling to any minor nation in the vicinity of the empire.
—From the report Tactical Lessons and Legacies of the Anatolian Reach War (English translation), written in 2487 by Rear Admiral Chaim Yedidya of the New Zioni Naval Defense Force
Bombardment Station Cannae, Oothrak System, Just beyond the Imperial–Chaos Quarter Border, Standard Date 8/09/2507
Aetius swung around, “blasting” at the holographic target in front of him. He wasn’t using live ammo, just pulses of light coming out of a small projector rigged to the wrist of his powered armor. The target, an image of a man dressed as a civilian carrying a gun, flopped and fell to the ground.
He spun around, the images of the holographic simulator filling his range of vision. A major city was projected—a city on fire filled with armed men all intent on killing him. It was a fairly common training scenario, one any noble who put on powered armor ran through. It taught a man how to fight in armor against a swarming force of lesser-armed enemies, a not unknown prospect given that in any fight few soldiers on the battlefield would have powered armor. Any man wearing it was likely to find himself facing large forces of normal soldiers either unarmored or in the standard body armor that soldiers had been wearing for centuries.
He dashed down a street, past low brick buildings and countless vehicles. The simulation was set so that he had to fight his way out of an area held firmly in the enemy’s control. So he scanned constantly, checking windows, corners, and doorways. He looked for any sign of movement, anything that looked like a gun barrel. The sound of explosions and engines surrounded him, distant though, from a battle on the other side of the city. Around him he could hear only the normal sounds you’d expect in a city under assault: panicked yells, automobiles racing by, the squeal of brakes, confused shouts…a background hum of such things. He tuned it out, trying to focus, to listen actively for anything out of place.
He came to an intersection and risked a glimpse around the corner. Gunshots greeted him. He darted back, the head of his suit vibrating, telling him one of his enemy’s bullets had “hit.” He ducked down and glanced about. In front of him lay a small automobile. He grabbed it, feeling the weight of it strain against his arm. He swung viciously, hurling it around the corner and smashing it on the ground. Darting behind it, he heard the sounds of bullets smashing into the metal of the auto. He grasped underneath it and flipped in on its side, making a shield of metal between himself and his attackers.
Shots pinged off the undercarriage of the vehicle. Aetius ignored it. He threw his weight behind the auto and pushed it forward. A metallic screech filled the air as it slid along the pavement. It did its job; it sheltered him. After about ten yards of this, there was a break in the shooting. His attackers had figured out his tactic and were fal
ling back to keep their distance.
This was exactly what he wanted. He popped his left arms over the auto, the one with a twenty-millimeter grenade launcher on its upper side. The weapon’s sight was automatically tied to his visual display, so he could line up his shot quickly. He focused on a trio of retreating fighters and fired three grenades into their midst. They exploded, sending bodies flying through the air. The blackened forms landed on the street motionless.
In response a half-dozen fighters emerged from side streets, all firing freely. Aetius grabbed the roof of the auto with both hands and heaved it above his head. The torso of his suit vibrated as bullets struck, but he was only exposed for a moment. He hurled the automobile forward. It bounced, tumbling straight at his enemies. They dove clear, in every conceivable direction, stopping their assault. He brought up his right arm, engaging the twelve-and-a-half-millimeter machine gun on it. Two quick bursts took out a pair of men streaking across an open street. He turned to find the other four, and seeing one of them hiding in a doorway, brought his gun up. He lifted his left arm and prepared to carpet the man with shrapnel.
Suddenly his suit’s proximity alarm blared, alerting him to a threat from above. He turned to look a millisecond before a cascade of bricks slammed down onto him. The image before him vanished, replaced by blackness.
“Damn it all,” Aetius grumbled. “End simulation.”
The blackness vanished; the cityscape vanished; it was all replaced by a fifteen-by-fifteen-meter metal room. All was bare except for a hemispherical holographic projector mounted on the ceiling. His suit disconnected from the projector’s program. No longer tied to the illusion, Aetius’s powered armor regained full movement. He stalked toward the sole door in the projection chamber, muttering. A pile of bricks? Truly? What were the odds that somebody would be able to see him coming and then rig up enough explosives to send a waterfall of bricks falling on his head, all while in the midst of battle? Infinitesimal odds, that’s what they were! What idiot tech had thought to program that into a battle simulation?