Blade of the Lucan: A Memory of Anstractor (5 page)

The cloak she wore was cumbersome but warm, and though she wanted to throw it off, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Casan was a warm, desert planet, and her thin skin was not doing well with the winter of Tyhera. She stopped at about twenty yards and dropped, listening to the whistling wind, the caw of strange birds, and the chirping of insects. This was an alien planet and she needed to learn its sounds. She stood there for a long moment with her face near the dirt, muscles taut, and ears listening and adapting.

When she thought she had the natural sounds memorized enough to track foreign ones, she rose again and approached the dome. It was a resource-gathering mill, and it had an alien insignia that she wasn’t able to read. She knew what it was doing, and she looked around and saw several more like it, pulling up minerals from below. This was the equipment of a crafter, so there would be no need for soldiers trolling the area. She ran back to her bike and resumed her ride through the trees and toward the city.

Marika reached Veece another hour after leaving the resource farm. It appeared suddenly before her, when she almost rode the bike off the side of a steep hill. The trees had obscured her approach, but with her reflexes she was able to avert disaster and take advantage of the location.

She pulled out a stand, touched two lights on its side, and rammed it into the ground at the top of the hill. She then attached the rifle, locking in the appropriate holds and then lay on her stomach and placed her right eye on the scope.

Veece was buzzing, and she could see people going about their daily lives within the beautiful arched entrances to the walled city. The architecture reminded her of home. Casanians loved to carve and create arches. She saw diplomats, their alien slaves, and uniformed men and women she assumed were some sort of police.

She had to take a shot. Though it would seem reckless, she may need to use the rifle at a later date, and she had to make sure that the crystal jump from their galaxy hadn’t thrown off the calibration. She turned the weapon, found a ball that a child had left on the street, exhaled slowly, and then depressed the trigger.

There was a split second of silence as the near-invisible shot found the ball and then it looked as if it vaporized. Marika lay still, daring not to move, but it appeared as if no one had seen the shot happen.

“You’re still accurate, big boy,” she whispered to her rifle, and then sat up and pulled her cloak in tighter.

Her hill was at the end of a thick bit of forestry. There was tall grass and lime-green flowers, large black rocks, and a brook. It was the perfect camping area for an assassin, and it made her wonder who else of the dark profession knew about it. This was an ancient planet with intelligent people. This meant that there would be assassins to hire, rich opportunists to kill, and the likelihood of a vantage point as amazing as hers being well known.

She weighed the odds. It was too good of a location to pass up, so she pulled out three shiny black orbs that were full of divots, somewhat like a golf ball. She threw one behind her, and another pair to either side. They would serve as radars to tell her if anything tried to sneak up. She then took some grass, and began to weave it into the grooves of her rifle.

The last thing Marika Tsuno did was to toss a crystal as far as she could towards the city. If a skilled assassin made it past her radar, she could always jump. She wasn’t looking forward to having any of them so close that she would need to consider it, but she wasn’t about to take any chances, not on this strange cold planet of Tyhera.

She thought to check in on Marian but decided not to. They were Phasers and they both knew what had to be done this day in order to prepare for the future. Marian trusted her to do what she was good at. Checking in would mean a lot of explanation, and the things she did could not be explained, not to one that knew little of the assassin’s way. Marian would hear from her when she was relaxing; for now, Marika must do what she knew how to do, and that was prepare for the perfect murder.

She laid back down, appearing as part of the bush to anyone who might fly above her or scan the area with binoculars. She knew how to blend and become invisible, and it allowed her to stay up there for the remainder of the day, watching Veece, and taking notes for the eventual tracking and killing of Palus Felitious.

T
he tunnel felt as if it went on for hours. The Deijen, the Tyheran, the rock cat, and the android dared not talk—or growl—for fear of something ahead hearing them. In reality, it was a thirty-minute trek, and when they finally emerged they found themselves outside of an old, burned down city.

“Cally,” Blu said sadly and turned to gauge Marian’s reaction. “They burned her with many of our friends still asleep in their houses,” he said, shaking his head and petting Nemesis. “It was a sad, sad night, Lady Raf. We all took to the hills like carrion bugs when dawn breaks. A shameful night for the resistance, a night of betrayal, death, and loss. So much loss.”

Marian touched his big hand and nodded sadly. “We will avenge them, Blu, we will—”

“How?” He grunted angrily, snatching back his hand with some annoyance and standing in front of her in a way that should have been intimidating. “We are a fifth in number of what we once were, back when we were a mere pain in Palus’s backside. How do you propose that so small a number will get revenge on a man that controls the twelve planets?”

“You have never had the help of a Phaser before,” she said, smiling at him with her eyes so wide that he could see the tiny, star-like objects in her pupils twinkle beneath the moonlight.

“Oh, don’t be cocky,” Blu said, and walked past her towards the buildings.

“What’s in there?” Marian asked.

“A place to sleep until the morning. We can’t be walking around at night in this place. Plenty of Shoran witches and Bargushes roam the countryside, looking for victims.”

“Bargushes, on this planet?” Marian asked, shocked. She could vividly remember the large, green, apelike creatures chasing her through the woods one day when she and her friends were playing at soldier. She was only thirteen at the time, and had run into one of their caves to hide from her friends.

“The Fels brought them here, brought them for the sole purpose of hunting renegades out in the bush. See, they don’t have to worry about those monsters turning on them. The Fels stay in Veece, or near their ships when they patrol. We rebels, outside of a few that have commandeered a bike or two – well, we’re easy prey out here. The Bargushes make sure of that.”

“And the witches? What is that about?” Marian asked as they found the ruins of an old cantina and slipped inside.

Blu led her to the back. “Aye, witches. Well, if I had to choose between the two, I’d take a Bargush tearing me from limb to limb. I may get lucky and that great big ape would snatch my head off first and end it quickly. With a Shoran witch, you never know what they want with you. They make sacrifices, you see, sacrifices to their blood god, in order to gain power over their enemies,” Blu said.

“How things have changed,” Marian said. “When I was a child, the witches were a legend. I played in the woods quite a bit and the last thing that I was worried about was a witch coming to sacrifice me. Now you’re saying that they are out and about … they practice the Mera Ku arts, do they not?”

“I believe so. The same healing and harming meditation that your husband does,” Blu replied.

“They don’t come out in daylight?” Marian asked.

“No, they have a network of caves, underground. Their eyes are blind to the light, but sharp in the night, like a bako bird. This is why you don’t want to cross their path on a midnight stroll. They will catch you, magic you into some sort of unnatural stasis, and then you would wake up as one of them. I wouldn’t be given the luxury of joining their coven; they would eat me. A Deijen would keep them fed for over a fortnight.”

Marian said no more as Blu dragged a stone slab away from a wall to reveal a crawl space. He motioned for her to follow Nemesis and the android through it. Inside, the hidden room was pitch black. Marian heard the stone being replaced and the android’s eyes glowed like light bulbs, illuminating the tiny room to reveal an array of sleeping mats and bowls.

“Those bowls have food,” he said. “Jerky! It may be bako bird jerky, mind you, but it’s seasoned and very tasty. No use going hungry while we wait out these Fels. So relax, eat, and let’s make the best of this,” he said.

Marian sat, let her hair down, and removed her shoes. The inside of the cantina was freezing but Blu unpacked one of the cubes and brought out a heater that he set down in the middle of the room. She shifted to where her tiny feet could be near it, and after a time, she laid back, relaxed, and stared at the stone ceiling.

“What was this room? Before the fires and bombs destroyed the place, I mean?” Marian asked after a time.

“This was one of our headquarters,” Blu replied with a bit of pride in his voice. “Cally was amazing in that it truly was beneath the blind eye of the Felitian Empire. She was like our very own resistance city. We even had a recruiter that was just about overt in getting people to join the cause.”

“How did you all manage that? I’m sure with spies and loyalists to Palus traveling, there had to be trouble,” Marian said.

“All the time. Cally was always being raided, shot up, and infiltrated by Fel soldiers,” Blu said, sitting up and pausing to munch on some jerky. He took a swig of wine from a large jug. “The thing is, as resistance men and women, we welcomed it. Fel attacks were a way for us to weed out the weak and train the strong. Actually Raf—your Raf, he made his name right here in the center of Cally city during an attack. Damn near died, the fool, but we patched him up and he went from being just another recruit to being a brother. ‘Bleeds resistance red,’ they used to say about him. Raf knew no fear.”

“Knows no fear,” Marian said, correcting his words. “He’s very much alive, Blu. Alive and
thyping
anything with a skirt from here to Anstractor’s edge.”

Blu looked puzzled. “Excuse me? What did you say?
Thyping
? I’m not understanding—”

“Sorry, I’m rambling, Raf was a hero here and I am constantly reminded of it. I’ve never seen him fearful of anything outside of failure, and even then it isn’t fear, just emotion over not wanting to disappoint those of us he loves.” She thought about the look in his eyes when he realized she was ready to leave him. “Rafian fights for what he believes in, and he won’t let anything short of death stop him once he’s on the path.”

She felt exhausted from the memory and wanted to talk about something else.  “I just don’t understand,” Marian said, changing the subject. “If they kept attacking then they knew you all were here, amassing troops, plotting and whatnot. Why would they allow you to continue?”

“They didn’t. Open those big, sparkly pupils of yours and look around, Lady Raf. The city of Cally is no more. They bombed this place when it was determined that the main resistance force operated out of here and not on Talula like they assumed.”

Marian grew quiet when he said this and reached inside the bowl to grab some jerky. When she put it in her mouth, the spice made her flinch visibly. It was salty, hot and sweet all at the same time, but the hot was a different kind of hot than she was used to. This spicy heat worked its way from the tongue all the way out to the limbs. It was so intense, in fact, that before long she was sweating and wanting to remove all of her clothes.

She pocketed a few pieces of the meat and drank deeply from the wine jug. A burp came out almost immediately, causing her to struggle not to drop the jug. She was so embarrassed that her deep, caramel-colored face turned a slight maroon in the light.

“You are definitely one of us!” Blu laughed, his chest heaving uncontrollably as he pointed at her and guffawed. The android joined in and Nemesis looked up from her jerky to regard them curiously as they snickered.

“I’m so … I can’t …” Marian tried, wanting to ball up and disappear from the embarrassment.

“Oh relax, Lady Raf, it’s just us rebels. There’s no fancy duchesses here to rap you on the knuckles for belching, or lords to turn up their nose at you for being a living creature. Come on now, laugh at yourself!”

Marian allowed herself to laugh. “It amazes me how much I am still that little Baroness at court inside, Blu. A burp like that would have gotten me locked inside my room for an entire week. The woman who cared for me inside the castle was a real piece of
schtill
.”

“
Schtill?
” Blu echoed, confused by the unfamiliar word.

“Oh, it means dung. She was a woman I hated with all my heart,” Marian said before taking another swig of the drink and belching again.

Before long she was fast asleep, and the wine kept her under in a motionless slumber that was void of dreams. She woke up after several hours to the sound of a bell ringing. Cally had a central clock that would wake everyone up at first light and the bombs had not managed to destroy it.

Marian rubbed her stinging eyes and looked around to find that Blu was missing. Thoughts of betrayal ran through her mind and she wondered if she’d exit the building to an army of Fels waiting for her. She looked around frantically, wanting to be wrong, and exhaled easily when she saw that there was a note written hastily on the ground. It let her know that he had left in a hurry to go help a friend in nearby Veece.

She grabbed the jug and took a swig of the wine before standing up and stretching painfully. It had been a long time since she’d slept on the ground, and her joints felt as if she had slept in a cramped box all night.

She pulled on her shoes, secured her knife, and knocked the dust off of her dress and cape. She hated how impractical her garb was for playing the role of resistance fighter, but it was all she had so she put it out of her mind. She grabbed a few pieces of jerky, sealed the bowl from which they came, and then slid past the rock to emerge behind the bar of what used to be Cally’s famous cantina. She could almost hear the music and see the fighters dancing and mingling back in the glory days of the resistance. It was a sad image, especially since it was during those days when she would orchestrate raids on tiny cells like this one.

She walked her aching legs through a side door of the cantina, and paused to listen to make sure she was alone. The place was a ghost town, so she went into the woods, climbing the grassy, rocky surface of the hills. She climbed for the better part of fifteen minutes until she found herself in a thick sea of grass, yellow and green as far as her eyes could see.

She walked through the tall grass, amazed that it was high enough to swallow her legs in its deep yellow waves. Her hands stretched out to touch them as she glided through, feeling like Rienne the Baroness once again. The sky was a pink color; she noticed it for the first time, and Talula, which hung low below a large visible planet, gave it the most wondrous view that she had ever seen in her life.

Tyhera's landscape was the stuff of paintings back in Anstractor. She wished that she had a
memtoc flobot
to capture it all to show Marika. She was still in this deep thought when she caught herself from accidentally stepping on a nest of large eggs. They were brown with beautiful emerald spots, and a cracked top shifted aside as a tiny kitten pushed its paw out to meet the world for the first time.

Marian gasped loudly. “Hatch kittens!” she exclaimed with glee, but her excitement was cut short due to a low rumbling growl that came from behind her.

Marian whipped around and pulled her knife free, sinking into a low stance. In front of her was the biggest rock cat she had ever seen, and she immediately realized she was in trouble.

“Look, Mom, I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “I got near your babies on accident. Please oh please oh please don’t make me kill you.”

The massive rock cat closed the distance on her slowly, then in a sudden motion, pounced with her jaws agape. Marian threw two tiny crystals, one in the air and one behind her. It was so fast and so effortless that it looked as if she had merely skipped backwards and was suddenly falling from the sky to land on top of the giant cat’s back.

The creature was confused and annoyed with Marian, who held on to the cat’s rough, rock-like neck as she leapt one way and then another, trying to throw her from her back. This went on for a while and Marian dug her heels into her underside and hugged her neck tightly. No matter how much the cat jumped and rolled to throw her off—which was a lot—Marian wouldn’t relent.

Though survival was all that occupied Marian’s mind during the encounter, there was a moment when she thought she would die. The cat would tear her throat out and splatter her blood across those beautiful stalks of grass. It would be a good death, a proper death to a creature whose passions rivaled hers. But Palus Felitious would have won, Amanxa and her people would die of starvation, and she would never be found. This thought kept her strong, and the cat could not shake her.
I will finish the mission
, she mumbled to herself,
I am a Phaser and we finish the mission
. 

After a long time the big cat gave up quietly, and crouched down, breathing heavily while Marian clung on with her eyes closed, wincing from the pain.

She risked removing one hand to take out a black crystal and clutched it close, determined not to use it but thinking she should. When she got off the cat’s back and retreated, crouching low, she sighed in relief when the mother didn’t bother to follow.

“Okay, no more hatch kittens,” she said out loud and then turned and began sprinting through the tall yellow brush.