Blade of the Lucan: A Memory of Anstractor (6 page)

~ * ~

When Marian hadn’t returned and didn’t report in, Marika decided it was time to get serious with a promise that she had made to Rafian. “I will bring her home safely,” she had told him, and he had believed her when she said it. If she were to show up back on Anstractor without his wife, she could only imagine the type of supernova that would result from his anger. An angry Rafian was something none of the Phasers had seen. Sure, he got upset sometimes, or disappointed, but angry? She would rather not be there to witness that event.

She had spent the day watching the streets of Veece from her vantage point up in the hills, then packed it up and took the bike home when the suns were setting. When she got near the ranch-styled house surrounded by pools of murky water, she stopped to take it all in from a distance. The place looked like the setting of a children’s story: it had white flowers surrounding it, growing wild and beautiful in their own way, and the trees grew so close that they formed a canopy, concealing it from anyone flying above.

She parked the bike and covered her tracks as she crept towards the back door. Better safe than sorry, she thought, and there was no evidence that Marian had returned. When she got inside, the place was empty, and she kicked off her boots and triggered the heating mechanism to warm the house.

She misted herself to clean up for the evening, and then pulled out a number of frozen meats and vegetables to deposit into the strange, self-heating pot that sat inside the kitchen. The pot was a curiosity that she wanted to take back to show her boyfriend, Vallen. You would place frozen items into its narrow top, and a chemical reaction would cook them to perfection in about fifteen minutes.

She took her meal into the living area and sat atop one of the many pillows that were thrown haphazardly around the room. It felt good to be on her backside after laying prone for hours earlier, and she scanned the room for entertainment to complete the relaxation. There was a small piece of furniture which resembled an ottoman, sitting central to the room. She saw a keypad, so she leaned forward and touched it and a hologram grew from it to take up the room.

Marika was impressed, and played with the keypad, seeing that she could adjust the size, color, and transparency of the hologram. After a while she was back on her pillow, watching what she assumed to be a drama, but it was in the Tyheran language that she didn’t understand.

“Wish that I’d thought about bringing a translator clip,” she said out loud, then muted the volume in order to listen to the wind blowing through the trees. The rustling of the leaves was therapeutic, and she thought of Vallen and how much she needed his muscular arms around her own.

She stretched out her long, shapely, coral legs, and glanced at her feet with some concern.

“Maybe we should give you two a massage later on,” she said, and then wiggled her long but well-formed toes. Part of the black polish had chipped on the right big toe and she hissed her teeth, annoyed at its imperfection.

When she reached down to touch it to see the extent of the damage, a sound made her freeze and remember quickly where her guns were. The sound was so slight that only a trained ear would hear it, but she couldn’t assume that it was natural or an accident when she hadn’t heard anything like it before.

She laid back and then snaked her body around to be on her stomach. She then crawled to the crumple of clothes that she had thrown into the corner. The noise came again, quieter this time, and with a rhythm that struck her as feet breaking twigs as someone approached. They were sneaking, whoever it was, and they were expecting to find her alone and vulnerable.

Marika grabbed the pistol from the holster on her boot, and while still crawling, removed the safety and then slipped behind the couch. She closed her eyes and felt the area, the same way she had when she first rode out to look at the city of Veece. An explosion shattered the glass door and accompanying wall, and an alarm went off as multiple boots echoed off the ceramic floor, marching in recklessly.

When she had counted that there were ten of them, Marika opened her eyes, popped up from the couch, and fired two rounds into the face of a man wearing shiny black armor. She ducked back down and popped up again, this time shooting another one in his chest. A barrage of bullets tore apart the couch as she crawled away, and when she got to the kitchen, she used the counters to shield her body from the shots.

An angry voice speaking in Tyheran ordered her to do something, but she couldn’t understand and even if she did, there was very little chance she would trust them. She raised her pistol over the counter and began to blindly fire. While she did this, she fumbled for some crystals and held them tight in her fist. The voice came again, and this time it was followed by movement, which Marika assumed was them making a rush at her.

Marika timed the first one and thrust the heel of her palm up into his chin. She grabbed his head and spun violently—snapping his neck—and then used his body as a shield to push the rest of them out of the kitchen. She darted sideways into the bedroom and then out the window and into the forest. She cursed herself for letting them have the house. There were too many Phaser items left inside and since the property belonged to Makk, leaving it to the Felitian police was not an option.

She was barefooted, naked with the exception of tiny shorts and a tank top, and she was freezing cold.
Where the hell are you, Marian?
she thought, and then glanced at her gun to make sure that it still had charges.

A Felitian trooper looked out the window, and she shook her head at his stupidity and placed a shot right between his eyes. Again, the rest of them fired on the area where she was, not paying any attention to the area where she had moved to.
This isn’t even fair
, she thought.
They’re amateurs
.

She slipped between the trees to the area where she had heard them approach. There was a bright orange transport, engine running as it bobbed up and down, hovering, and, from what she could tell, there was no one guarding it. Marika fiddled with the engine and then jammed the controls so that it would fly a straight path. She then sent it speeding away from the house, and when it crashed into a tree and exploded, she could hear the running footsteps of the foolish troopers.

She licked her dark lips in anticipation of the slaughter, and found a bush to vanish into. “Good thing you didn’t come back tonight, Marian,” she whispered, thinking of how the troopers had snuck up to the house. They had chanced upon a stealth expert and that was their mistake, but they would never realize this by the time she was done.

W
hen the first trooper heard the explosion, he looked at his four comrades and imagined that beneath the black glass of their masks, they had the same look of hopelessness he did. Whoever this rebel was, she had skills that were equivalent to some of the galaxy’s most notorious bounty hunters.

“That would be the ride home, gentlemen,” he said with the high-dialect of a man born of Veece.

“Maybe she tried to fly it, and crashed into a tree during her escape,” another soldier said.

“If wishful thinking is your answer to us getting home tonight, Arto, I will have your badge,” the first man replied.

The smaller man shrank back. It was meant to be a joke to lighten the mood, but as usual it went right over the head of Furis Kyle. He wanted to spit an insult back at the man, this failed son of the right hand to Palus Felitious. He wanted to remind him that his crimes had cost him a dukedom, and now he was a lowly patrol officer, just like the rest of the lowborn.

“Stop staring at me. I can feel your eyes through your helmet,” Furis said, knocking over jugs and plates as he pushed through the house to the opposite side of the explosion.

“Are we to retreat, Kyle?” the biggest of the five asked. But as soon as Furis spun to tear into him for asking stupid questions, a shot brought the big man down, and another clipped Arto in his throat. He went down screaming in such a way that Furis wanted to cover his ears. The scream had a gargling sound to it, as if his throat was filling with blood. He turned to run away from the shots, but then another of his men was killed.

Furis Kyle was through the window and into the forest, tearing his helmet off to breathe. He sprinted away, giving little care to the branches and trees that loomed like large, menacing giants, threatening to slow his escape from whatever was about to kill him. He heard the remainder of his men taking shots and dying. He cursed but felt no remorse for them. They had been too slow, and their hesitation had provided enough of a distraction for him to get back to headquarters and report it.

Furis ran so hard that it felt as if his heart would burst, and though the burning in his chest was becoming unbearable, he would not risk being caught by whatever the hell that red woman was.

When he came to the edge of an embankment, he stopped. There was water rushing along from east to west in the river below, and it looked like silvery magic beneath the moonlight. He didn’t hesitate for long and jumped, staying submerged for as long as he could so that the currents could wash him away. He could only manage a minute or so before he surfaced to gasp for air, but he hoped that the killer hadn’t seen him, and that she had given up on her pursuit.

A sharp burning sensation took over his shoulder and between gulps of air broken up by the waves trying to drown him, he managed to see what it was. He had been shot, and whatever it was that shot him had used a low impact weapon of some sort. He bobbed up and down in the rapids until his body smashed into a rock, and then the icy water, moon, and the dark looming trees that was the river’s canopy faded to black.

~ * ~

Furis Kyle woke up near the outside wall of Veece, where the river flowed through. He woke up violently to a large Deijen pushing down on his chest while he spat up water and sucked oxygen into his lungs. It was painful and frightening, but when he rolled over and held his chest, he saw long, shapely legs leading up towards a beige skirt, split in the front with jewels wrapped around the waist of their owner. Her reddish brown hair was tucked beneath a green headscarf, and then he recognized her and was immediately embarrassed about his condition.

The woman was Beatrice, one of his father’s courtesans. She was standing over him, watching him intently, but when their eyes met, she gasped and began to wiggle her hands in a hysterical way.

“Young master, are you alright?” she asked, reaching down to help him up as the Deijen retreated a few steps and became a statue. “How fortunate it was that we were here when you washed up. Can you talk?” she asked, then stood up and looked over at the Deijen. “Voren, come over here and carry him, we need to take him back to—”

“Keep that damned thing away from me!” Furis barked. “I’ve had enough of aliens for tonight. Look, Bee, thank you, but I need to get back to the station. I have to report on what happened just now.”

“B-but you’re bleeding badly, Furis,” Beatrice whined.

Furis shifted the chest piece of his armor away from where the strange bullet had lodged itself into his skin. The shot was unlike anything he had seen on Tyhera, a shot that could mince through Hurakin armor. He removed the chest piece gingerly. It was still burning and he found that he was unable to move his right arm more than a few inches. When he was down to nothing but his wet pants and boots, he walked into the light of a nearby building and tried to examine the wound.

“Let me,” Beatrice said, and leaned in close to him to peer into the gaping hole of his shoulder. “There is something glittering in there,” she said.

“Glittering?” Furis snapped. “What do you mean, glittering?”

“I think you should go see a medic first, Furis. There is something glowing in your arm, and I doubt that it is good for your health,” she said.

Thanks, genius
, Furis thought, and then forced a smiled at her and nodded to the Deijen before hobbling to the gates. Veece had begun to lock its walls at night as an extra precaution against the resistance fighters. The city’s footprint was in the shape of an oval, and at one of its smallest points stood a set of tall, narrow gates. Furis walked up to the gates and faced the panel, and when the droid asked for his identification, he presented his family ring to it.

The doors slid into the walls and revealed an entrance. Furis Kyle stepped through and headed towards the police station. The building, like most of the architecture in the city, was a sandy color, circular, with arched windows and doors, and a domed ceiling of black and red to indicate that troopers worked there. In Veece, the colors of the roof were the unmarked signs of what one could expect to find inside. It was a feature that was meant to confuse outsiders and trip up the resistance, but still inform citizens.

He held the throbbing area of his wound, and ignored the glances from people he passed as he made his way to the building. When he finally got there, he barked at the young man at the front desk to get him an audience with the captain. His head was spinning and his patience was gone, and his arm was beginning to feel really numb.

When he plopped down on the stone bench inside of his office, he lost control. It was as if all the energy within him decided to take a vacation. He sat down hard, and his head led the rest of his body down to the floor. When his face slammed into the floor, he blacked out. A tiny crystal embedded in a metallic bullet shell slipped out of the hole in his shoulder and rolled out next to his face.

A tear in the atmosphere above the crystal rippled reality in such a way that if anyone had witnessed it, they would have thought there was an earthquake. A slit opened up, revealing the inside of a house, and then a bald, coral-skinned woman in all black stepped through. The shaking subsided and closed before the crystal evaporated into tiny particles.

Marika looked around quickly to make sure she was alone. She had her gun at the ready in her right hand, and the left was holding a large sack with hers and Marian’s belongings. She rushed to the open arch of the window to peer outside. The streets were dark, with the exception of street lamps suspended from tall poles bordering the roads and buildings. She threw a dark shawl across her face, pulled up the hood of her cloak, and then tossed the bag out the window. She gave the place a final look before reaching down to collect the tracking bullet that was next to Furis, then turned to climb out of the window.

She stopped and looked down at Furis for a time, working through her head the pros and cons of killing him now that she was inside the city. When she heard footsteps approaching, this prompted her to slip out the window, grab her bag, and then meld into the crowd of people walking around. She saw a tall structure that lacked the domed rooftop of the rest of the buildings and she walked towards it, keeping to the shadows as much as possible.

The whole exercise reminded her of a mark that she once had to stalk and kill on the streets of a city in Louine on Anstractor. The mark never stayed in one place long enough for her to kill him, so she’d had to follow him out onto the streets in broad daylight. She had worn the face of a Louine that she killed, and dressed in a way that was cloaked but still common for the area. It was the most disgusting assassination she had ever carried out, but the fact that it was on Louine—a planet rarely visited by the other races—had turned her into a legend.

Wearing a person’s face that was cold, dead and inanimate does something to one’s psyche, but she was young and much more hardened at the time. She had merely put it out of her mind as she walked the four blocks it had taken to get close to him, call out his name, and then put a bullet in his head as soon as he turned around. She was no Phaser then, so escaping wasn’t as easy as dropping a crystal and blinking out. The man was a governor that people adored, so as soon as she shot him, she had to find a way to disappear.

Louine is the most tropical area on Anstractor, so water was literally everywhere. When the crowd began to panic, she joined them, and tore off the borrowed face, clothes, and shoes as she ran to the city wall. She climbed it masterfully, and dove several feet down into one of the waterfalls that bordered the city. The memory of it came to her as she kept her leisurely pace, going inside the shadows of Veece.

Earlier, when she’d sat on the hill watching the daily life of the Tyherans, she had looked through one of the windows of the tall building that she approached. She knew it was a fancy hotel, one where many alien visitors and people of power stayed. It would not be easy for a masked woman in all black to purchase a room, but the city seemed primitive. There were no scanners and droids like Anstractor, which could pick up on what it was she was about to do.

A crackle in her ear stopped her short and she found a nearby bench and sat down quickly. The crackling gave way to what sounded like breathing, and then Marian’s voice broke through. “Marika, are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here. Marian, where the hell are you?” she asked.

“I’m so sorry I took this long to contact you, but things went all kinds of wrong. I’m in this abandoned city with a friend, hiding out from the Veece police,” Marian replied.

“Well, I’m in Veece,” Marika began.

“What! How in the worlds did you manage that?” Marian exclaimed.

“Too long a story to explain from a compromised position, Rhee,” Marika replied. “Things are easy if you can be ‘just another Casanian’ when you’re on a mission, y’know? But here, I am ‘the alien’ since I don’t look anything like the people here, and I’m dressed like I’m going to a funeral, or en route to scare the life out of someone.”

“Oh, Marika I’m so sorry. You’re being calm about it but I bet it’s been a rough day for you, with the Felitians being as cautious as they’ve been and all.” Marian sighed. “Look, it’s too dangerous for me to come and find you tonight, and I don’t want to leave my friend. If you can just post up somewhere out of sight for the night, we can rendezvous tomorrow. Blu says the day clerk at the largest hotel there is one of us. The name of the hotel is Palas Sun Toucher. I know you can’t read it but there will be a logo of a black tower within a large red circle. Go there after noon tomorrow and he will give you a room, a set of keys, and all the food you can eat.”

Marika absorbed the information and then said, “Makk’s house is compromised, by the way. Your Felitian friends are very thorough in their whole, ‘keep the people on their toes thing.’ You may need to warn him.”

“They murdered Makk and a few others last night, Marika.
Thype
them. You just get to the hotel tomorrow and I’ll take care of the rest,” Marian said, her voice low and dangerous.

There was some silence as Marika absorbed the information. She couldn’t help but feel upset over the death of the pirate, Makk. He had been good to them and all for the sake of Rafian’s name. From the way Marian was talking she could tell she had taken it personally. She was putting things into action, and Marika hoped that it wasn’t her being rash over Makk’s untimely death.

“Are you sure about this?” Marika asked, not liking the idea of entrusting her safety to a stranger.

“The resistance is well connected here, Marika. It may be some time before we can meet up again, but at least there I know you will be safe until I am ready to move.”

~ * ~

There was something magical about music, to the point that it defies all understanding. Music could conjure up memories of things long buried, and emotions once felt. Marian woke up to the sound of Meren’s Benevolent Symphonic Orchestra, and their popular rendition of “Savior,” a ballad dedicated to Palus Felitious and his rise to power. It was a song that used to soothe her as a child. It was full of horns, dominant trumpets that allowed space only for the strongest of string instruments and the big bad bass drum.

It was a throwback to days of hard black boots on her feet, rapier dangling at her waist, and several officers hanging on her every word, ready to do her bidding. It was a song that brought her the memory of the day when she first admitted to herself that she was in love with the handsome rebel who broke into her house to escape her troopers.