by Fox, Jaide
Zeta walked inside the armory and shut the door behind him. He locked it and then took down three silver rifles from the long racks.
***
Even before the first traces of light in the sky, the huge crowd began to gather at the city square just as they had the day before. This time, the square was well lighted and roped off, and there was a single large stone pillar with two chains hanging from it standing near the center. Two floating plasma radiocameras drifted overhead.
Zeta and two of his guards waited there across from the pillar. Beside them, on the stone floor of the square, was a small metal rack on which rested three silver rifles. A long length of black silk trailed from Zeta’s belt.
Very soon, King Kore and his usual band of ministers arrived at the balcony. As soon as they were comfortably seated, the king waved his hand and Zeta nodded to another group of guards. From beneath the balcony where the king and his party sat, the guards marched Fallon into the square and stood him in front of the stone pillar. Then they forced him to kneel and wrapped the chains around his chest and arms.
Fallon was still covered with mud and dirt and dried blood, just as he had been when he first walked into the square the day before. He looked up, blinking in the glare of the bright lights, and then stared directly into the floating radiocamera that was nearest him.
The crowd shouted and jeered as soon as they saw Fallon. “Criminal! Criminal! Criminal!” they chanted again.
Kore stood up to pronounce the sentence, and the radiocamera moved into position just above him to broadcast his image and words to everyone in the city. “As I told you yesterday,” he began, “this is the evil one who gave the order to release that virus that killed the woman on our world. Now he will pay for that unspeakable crime, right here in front of my firing squad. Captain Zeta.”
Zeta stepped forward, drew himself up, and gave the king a sharp salute.
“Carry out the sentence.”
Zeta lowered his hand, spun around on his heel, and marched to the small rack holding the three silver rifles. He lifted up two of the rifles and gave one to each of the two guards. “Aim for the head,” he said to them quietly, and then walked out to the pillar and the chained prisoner.
Standing just behind the pillar, Zeta pulled out the length of black silk from his own belt and proceeded to tie it around Fallon’s eyes. “No,” Fallon said, trying to turn his head away, but Zeta only pulled it tighter. “Trust me,” he whispered, tying on the blindfold. “Hold very, very still. When you hear the shots--play dead. Trust me. Ebony and Adrienne.”
The prisoner raised his head and turned towards Zeta at the mention of those two names, but Zeta was already marching back to the other side of the square. He picked up the third and last silver rifle and then stood between his other two men.
King Kore raised one hand. “Ready!”
Zeta and his men raised their rifles.
“Aim!”
“The head,” Zeta whispered again. He closed one eye and peered through the crosshairs of his rifle sight.
“Fire!”
The flaring white light and screaming whistle of three rifles shattered the peace of the quiet dawn. The crowd erupted into cheers as the prisoner jerked once and then dropped his head and moved no more.
Zeta placed his rifle back in the rack and walked out to the prisoner, noting the searing burn mark on one side of the man’s head. A small spiral of smoke curled up from the burned skin and the scorched chin-length hair. Zeta placed his fingers on the prisoner’s neck to check for a pulse, and then looked up at King Kore and shook his head. The crowd cheered even louder and began chanting again. “Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead!”
Zeta looked up and nodded to the group of guards who had brought out the prisoner. They marched over and unchained the man, catching him as he fell over onto the stone floor. “Take him away to the holding room,” Zeta ordered. “Quickly. Before the crowd riots. Quickly.”
The guards picked up the body and carried it straight out of the square, disappearing under the balcony and leaving through the same door where they had entered. Zeta followed them closely. He could hear the cheering of the crowd and the bragging of King Kore echoing through the square, and the entire city, as the radiocamera broadcast it everywhere at once.
At last Zeta and his men and the dead prisoner were under the balcony. The doors to the city square slammed shut behind them. They made a turn in the dimly lit, low-ceilinged stone corridor and carried the body back inside the holding room.
There was a long wooden coffin waiting there for the remains of the prisoner. “Put him inside,” Zeta ordered, and the guards lifted up the body and let it half-fall, half-drop into the coffin. “Now go,” Zeta said. “Quickly. I will have the disposal squad take care of the remains. You have all done well. Go now and close the door behind you. Wait until you hear my signal before you return.”
The guards asked no questions, as Zeta knew they would not; and they all turned around and left the room, shutting the door as ordered. He stepped to the door and listened to them marching away down the long stone corridor. Soon their heavy footsteps faded away.
Zeta locked the door and walked back to the prisoner. He looked down into the wooden coffin and shook him by the shoulder. “Fallon,” he said. “I know you can hear me. I am Captain Zeta. I am the husband of Adrienne, whose sister is Ebony, one of the women you took from the harem.”
Slowly, Fallon opened one eye and looked up at Zeta. “You are the reason I am alive?”
“I am.”
Cautiously, Fallon sat up and looked around the room. “Then I thank you.” He turned his head, wincing, and then touched the burn mark on the side of his head. “You’re a good shot.”
“I had to make it look real. The other two rifles were set to flash and sound only. We sometimes use them that way to break up fighting so that we don’t have to kill anyone.”
“Yes. I know. Again, I thank you. But why would you risk so much…”
There were footsteps outside the door. Someone pounded on it hard, several times, and then tried to open it--but it was well locked from the inside. “Open the door!” the voice demanded. “King Kore wishes to see the dead prisoner for himself!”
***
Fallon grabbed the sides of his coffin and started to get up, but Zeta shoved him back down. “Quiet!” he hissed. “Play dead. I will handle this. Follow my lead. Dead!”
From where he lay in the rough wooden coffin, Fallon heard Zeta unlock the door of the holding room. “The prisoner is dead, King Kore,” said Zeta. “I have determined it myself. There is no need for our king to stay in this dark and dishonorable place.”
“Yes, there is. I will see his face. I will know for myself that he is dead.”
“Guards. Wait outside. I will protect our king while he is here.”
“Aye, Captain Zeta,” the voices said, and the heavy door slammed shut again.
Kore’s hesitant footsteps came closer to the wooden coffin. Fallon could feel a slight movement as the king placed his hand on the side of the coffin and gripped it tightly. “Strange,” Kore whispered. “He wears my face. I knew I should have killed him years ago--but he is my twin, and I could not. How can any man kill the one who wears his same face? It would be too much like killing myself. I could never do it.”
Kore took his hand away from the coffin. “But now, Zeta, you and your men have done that work for me. I will never have to think of him again. Ah, it is a fine day, after all--ahhhhh!”
Fallon held tight to Kore’s throat, cutting off the strangled cry. “Brother, being captured and tried and shot in the head with a plasma rifle was all worth it, just to see the look on your face right now.”
He grinned at Kore, keeping his hand gripped tight on his brother’s throat, and slowly sat up until he could see eye to eye with him. “You should have killed me, for I will stop at nothing to bring you to justice.”
Kore sank to his knees, his eyes bulging out of his head, and Fallon kep
t his tight hold even as he swung over the coffin and stepped down to the cold stone floor. “Is this fear I see in your eyes, my brother? Do you think me a ghost? Or is it just the crushing of my hand on your worthless neck?”
The king tried to croak out a word, but could not get the breath to say anything. “What’s that?” Fallon said, pretending to bend down to listen. “Are you trying to call for Captain Zeta, in the hope that he will protect you?” Fallon snorted. “You have no friends here in this palace. There are only the men and women that you have used and brutalized for all these decadent years--and now those years are coming to a close.”
He released Kore, shoving him to the floor as he did so. “I wish your life was worth sparing. But I know that you will never be anything more than what I see before me now--a terrible force for destruction and waste.”
Fallon slowly walked around the gasping, panicked Kore, and glared down at him with utter contempt. “You have brutalized and tormented the women in your harem for years. That alone would be enough to earn you a death sentence--but I am not like you. I will still have you taken to trial, and if your life is spared then perhaps you can live out your days in a luxurious room while you are cold and barefoot and dressed in thin bits of silk and forced into having anal sex each and every day.”
As fast as he could, Kore got to his feet and tried to get to the door. He opened his mouth to cry out but could make no more than a whimper after the damage Fallon had done to his neck. Zeta stepped in front of him and stood unmoving as Kore ran straight into him. Kore’s silk robes were no match for Zeta’s black leather armor, and so the king just shrank back and began wildly looking about him and fumbling with his robes.
“What’s wrong?” said Fallon. “Do you not want the same fine treatment you gave to the women of your harem? If it was good enough for them, it’s--”
Suddenly Zeta raised his arm as Kore lunged at him with a dagger. The blow bounced harmlessly off of the armor, but Fallon quickly grabbed Kore by one wrist. “I meant what I said about letting you live and taking you to trial. But I will not allow you to harm anyone ever again, and certainly not this man, who has served you for so long with loyalty that you did not deserve.”
Fallon bent Kore’s wrist back to force him to drop the dagger, but then Kore reached into his sash with the other hand and pulled out another blade. He swung it viciously at Fallon, who quickly grabbed his other wrist and stopped him.
“You are weak and unfit from too much leisure, brother,” Fallon said, easily keeping both daggers away from him. “But you are also desperate and frightened. That makes you dangerous. Drop these weapons.”
But Kore only croaked out “Guards!” and tried to swing the daggers again. This time, Fallon turned Kore’s own hand against him and slammed the dagger into Kore’s own heart.
“You may have had some superstition over killing your twin,” Fallon whispered, “but I have none--not when that twin was as cruel and evil as you.”
King Kore fell dead to the cold stone floor of the holding room, rolling over to lie face down against the rough wooden coffin of his own twin brother.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Fallon looked up at Captain Zeta, who was replacing his own dagger back in its sheath at his belt. “Fallon. The way out is obvious. He was your identical twin brother. Are you willing to take his place?”
He hesitated only a moment. “I am,” Fallon answered. “But I will not hide it for long.”
“Just long enough to get out of this room,” Zeta answered, and together they pulled all of Kore’s heavy silk robes off of his dead body. In a moment they were dressing the body in Fallon’s mud-covered black leather pants and dumping it into the wooden coffin.
“These are very soft,” Fallon remarked, adjusting the long layers of thick silk over his chest, “but not for me. As you said, I will wear such things only long enough to get me out of this room.”
Zeta glanced up at him, and then lifted the long wooden lid from the floor and placed it securely on top of the coffin. Fallon heard it snap into place and then Zeta flipped the metal grips that would hold it there. “No one will disturb this,” Zeta said. “Lift up the hood of your outer robe to hide your hair, since you lack the dark and white streaks that Kore had. Otherwise, if you walk with me and my guards, none will question you.”
“Then let us go now.”
Zeta pulled open the door, and Fallon, dressed as his brother King Kore, followed him out into the damp stone corridor. Zeta glanced down at the wristband he wore and touched two of its silver buttons. In a moment, the same eleven guardsmen who were at the execution walked around the corner and halted just in front of the door to the holding room.
“The king wishes to return to the harem,” Zeta said. “We will escort him there.” He glanced at Fallon and bowed, and then Fallon started off down the corridor with Zeta and the eleven guards right behind him.
In a few moments, they had walked down the several long marble corridors and arrived at the tall and very heavy wooden doors which led to the harem. The guards pushed them open. Fallon drew a breath and then walked--not marched--inside, trying to remind himself that he had to behave as Kore and not as himself.
He turned to the guards. “Go. All of you. Zeta, you remain to serve me here, but the rest of you go. Now.” Fallon waved his hands about to dismiss them, and then turned back with a swirl of his long robes to face the large open room of the harem.
There were a great many women gathered here, all huddled together at the very back of the room as though they hoped he would not notice them. “You!” he cried, waving his hands at the crowd of women. “I want to meet with my newly returned captives. There should be four of you. Walk forward now!”
There was some wailing and discord from the women, but in a moment four of them edged their way through the crowd and stepped forward. Fallon recognized them as the four he had put aboard the flyer just two nights ago, though inwardly he was angered to see that they were practically naked and had not even been allowed to comb their hair since arriving.
He saw Famke, the tall and silent blonde, wearing nothing but a strip of white silk across her breasts and two more strips of white tied together at her hips. There was Cassie, the small tearful blonde, wearing similar pieces of fabric in blue. Jane stood frowning in little pieces of orange silk, while the fourth woman--the fourth woman was Ebony, dark and beautiful as a raven among the pigeons, standing tall and glaring and defiant in nothing but strips of red silk.
Fallon forced himself to look away from her. “All of you! Into that side room! Now! Zeta, come with us!” He tried to remember to sound weak and demanding, and did not know if he succeeded or not; but all four of the women reluctantly walked into the room that Fallon had indicated.
He followed them inside. The room proved to be not much more than a large closet. He saw many colorful silk skirts and wraps, and many pieces of jewelry, but no shoes or any other kinds of clothing. But this would do as a place to talk to the four of them.
“Captain Zeta, close the door.” Zeta did so and stood guard in front of it.
Fallon only had eyes for Ebony, but she spoke before he did. “Well, Kore,” she spat, with a look of utmost contempt on her face. “Are you going to take us all at once in here? A special welcome home party? Had to bring some extra muscle to help you?”
Fallon gazed at her, and then reached up and drew back the hood of the robe so that it fell to his shoulders. He stood quietly, looking each woman in the eye and nowhere else, and allowed them to get a good look at him.
“I am not Kore. I am Fallon.”
They all stared at him. Their eyes flicked to one another, and then back to Fallon, and then finally to Zeta. “Is this true, Captain Zeta?” Ebony asked.
Zeta gave her a slight nod. “It is true. By your sister’s child--my child--it is true.”
They all looked back at Fallon again. “But…but…how is this possible?” breathed Cassie. “We saw--we saw on the screens….”
<
br /> “Look at my hair,” Fallon said. “It is burnished silver. Kore’s was black with thick lines of silver in it. And you can see the mark left by the firing squad.”
“But--the firing squad executed Fallon!” exclaimed Jane. “We saw him fall, and we saw him carried out dead!”
“Not dead,” Zeta said. “Only grazed. By me. The other weapons were disabled.”
Fallon saw Ebony staring up at him, and there was both fear and longing in her eyes--fear that what he said was impossible, and hope that maybe it was not.
“Ebony,” he said gently, “I know things about you that Kore never did. I know that you were frightened of the red and blue stars above Chalcydon when you first saw them, because they were so strange to you. I know that you fell into that terrible black lake at the mine, and I helped you to get out. And I know…” He smiled a little. “I know that you suffered a rather peculiar form of ‘drunkenness’ just recently….”