Blade of the Lucan: A Memory of Anstractor (16 page)

“A few hours more and you all will be free,” she said and amidst cries of loss and pain, they grunted their approval and followed her through the jungle. She brought out the comm that she had taken from the lead trooper and called up the surviving trooper in her employ. “Listen,” she said to him when he woke up to answer. “Wake up, get that thing in the air, and meet me at these coordinates. Fly low so that the other cruisers don’t see you up here. You’re going to have to land that thing on an area of about twenty yards.”

They picked up the pace in a long steady run while the troopers of Veece looked everywhere for their bodies. One of the cruisers saw the corpse in the waterfall, so the majority of them flew over there to see if they all had suffered the same fate. Marika kept her company to the deepest parts of the woods, shooting anything that dared to threaten them and watching the skies until they reached the cave where she and Delyi had set up camp.

“Wait here,” she whispered and snuck to the side of the cave entrance. She was careful not to trigger the traps, and powered down the detectors that she had set up earlier.

“Dee?” she called out. “Dee?”

A tiny voice inside replied with, “I’m here.”

She came outside and hugged Marika, and as they were about to make introductions, a cruiser settled down on a mountain of dirt off to the side of the cave. Marika told the company to hold their fire and then crossed over to the cruiser by herself.

She grabbed the man by the arm and pulled him out. “You did well,” she said to him.

She reached behind his ear and removed the earring. It made her ticklish inside to know that the old suicide bomb bluff still worked.

“Once we lift off, just tell them I held you captive during the whole ordeal,” she said to him and touched his cheek. “You chose life over honor. I am not familiar with men like you, but it means you are a danger to anyone who would call you a friend. I am supposed to kill you; that is what smart Phasers do, but you earned your freedom, so run back to Veece. Tell your superiors that the next time a Casanian issues a threat, they would do well to respect it.”

The man turned around and sprinted in the direction of the city. Blu watched him go and then threw Marika a questioning glance, but he dropped it after a time when he realized she was just honoring her promise.

“I would have shot him,” he said to her as he got into the back seat of the sleek, eight-seat cruiser. “Felitians are vicious. It may come back to bite you in the rear.”

Marika puffed and twisted her black lips into a smirk. “He did what I asked him to do. The code is very firm on us keeping our word, big man. Plus, he’s the lone survivor of a troop of soldiers that included his commander. Do you think he’ll be reporting any of this to anybody? He just helped us to escape!”

“If you say so, but if we seem him again, he’s dead. My code says that Fels are the devil, and my code has kept me around for a very long time,” Blu replied.

“You know, Marian speaks very highly of you, big man. She never told me that you had such a penchant for whining, though,” she said to him and Delyi—who sat next to Marika—looked back at him to wink. “You fought like a Phaser though, Blu, so we’re okay.”

She lifted the cruiser and skimmed the treetops, then flew it north for an hour. Once she was sure that no Felitians had followed, she took them up into the sky and then slowed the engines so they could talk.

Marika spun around in her chair and said, “Here’s the scoop. Marian is on Talula. She’s meeting with some badasses from Lochte, I think. She’s going to need things ready down here for when they do their thing. Where can I take you to get fed and cleaned up? I mean, no offense, but I’m assuming that sewage and water were as scarce a commodity in the Veece cells as was food?”

“Ravela is an allied city, Marika,” Blu said evenly. “I have friends there that can take care of us. The mayor is with the resistance, and he will keep the Felitians off of our trail. Just land this thing a mile or so outside of town, and I will get him to send a car to pick us up.”

“Sounds good,” Marika said. “And I hope you all know that I am merely telling jokes to lighten the mood. What you all have been through isn’t easy for anyone, and I want you to know that they will pay for the friends we lost tonight.”

“Marian is very lucky to have a friend like you,” Blu said to her as the engines revved and they shot out towards Ravela. “I am very afraid of your world.”

“What makes you say that?” Marika asked.

“I have seen what Rafian can do, and now I have seen you. The two of you are from a place that is filled with war and produces warriors such as yourself. A place like that is the thing of nightmares, and we Deijen are a peaceful people,” Blu said, then looked out the window as if in deep thought. “Thank you, for rescuing us, Marika, friend of Lady Raf.”

“You’re quite welcome, Blu, my Deijen friend.”

J
emi was a small town built on the outskirts of Talula’s untamed wilderness. The family that founded the island on which it was built was said to have first traveled there by way of a two-hour swim. The beasts of the wilderness had devoured their young son, so the mother, daughter and father escaped towards the milky, pink waters of Lake Ayrila and swam for their lives, hoping to gain the other side. What they found instead was a piece of land that was large enough to hold a city. They built a house, and called their friends, and after a hundred years, there was a tiny island city accessible only by way of an expansive bridge.

Marian thought the story was nonsense. She believed that rich investors had funded its construction even before the time of Palus Felitious. Jemi was probably a lover’s paradise where wealthy senators would spend weekends with their lusty Primian mistresses.
I can see my cheating husband here
, she thought to herself with a bit of a smirk as she regarded the tall buildings and the numerous red flowers that seemed to be everywhere.

The familiar buzzing in her ear forced her to uncross her long legs and look about to make sure she was alone. The city seemed all but deserted, but of the few people that were milling about, none of them were near enough to overhear her conversation.

“Marika, please tell me you have good news,” she said as soon as the buzzing had stopped.

“I have great news. Your friend is out, and I am in a warm mud bath, soaking my limbs,” Marika said.

“Murder and luxury, that’s my girl,” Marian joked, and then brought up her hand as if she were using a comm when a grinning older man shuffled over to see if she wanted some company.

Marian adjusted her position to prevent him from sitting next to her on the bench, and then averted her gaze as she spoke to Marika. The man realized that she was busy and disinterested, so he pretended to be looking for someone and then moved away to find another pretty target.

“I tell you, Rika, I forgot how absolutely irritating the men of my world can be,” Marian said when he was gone. “How is Blu? Is he okay?”

“Blu and the others are fine, Rhee; at least now they are. The Fels were keeping them awake for over 24 hours at a time, and they weren’t feeding them at all.”

“If only we could have predicted how low the Felitian organization would go. They were once a misunderstood tyranny that helped a number of people,” she reminisced sadly. “Now they’re just a network of thugs, causing pain and misery. Has anyone told you why the resistance came about against Palus?” she asked Marika, looking around to make sure that no one was near her to listen.

“No, I just know that they are bad and the resistance is good,” Marika replied.

“Well, at one time Tyhera was in chaos due to the leader of Apun, the country where I grew up. Criminals ran the planet, and the governments were paid to let it happen. How it got so bad, I don’t know, but my parents were victims as a result of it. My sister was taken by a gang warlord when she was in her teens, and my father—who isn’t a fighter—could do nothing about it but complain to the local Baron. Life was hell for them until Palus and his army started a coup to take over Apun.

“See, they were heroes to us during that time. They killed off the gangsters and assassinated the false leaders. When Palus named himself Emperor, he rewarded the faithful, and my father’s status grew as a result of this. Old prejudices and our twisted class system disallowed the Felitians from giving my father a title. They gave it to me instead, since they saw me as a child, born into the new world of the glorious Palus Felitious. I was too small and too ignorant to the world to realize that my blessing came at the cost of people’s lives.

“Pretty soon people stood up. They weren’t okay with one corrupt government being replaced with another. These were the freedom fighters and they seemed to have membership on all twelve planets. They have always been too small and too sparse to stop Palus, however. The few attempts at his life were ill-conceived and pathetic, so he got better defenses and stayed behind his shields where they couldn’t get him. In time they began to think that he was invincible, and so they became content with annoying him instead of trying to stop him.

“So here we are, the descendants of a planet torn to shreds by corruption. Palus is not truly Emperor of the galaxy like he says he is, but he does control Tyhera, the largest of the twelve planets.”

Marian sighed and stood up to walk. There was a strip of water that ran through the center of the city and it showcased numerous fountains of varying styles. She began to walk next to it, enjoying the sound of the water, as Marika stayed silent, expecting her to finish.

“And you expect to be the one that can get close to this invincible world-conqueror to kill him?” she asked, thinking for the first time that Marian had not thought things through. “Marian, have you any intel on where the man is, or where he will be in order to carry out your assassination?”

“No, not yet, Marika, but … I don’t know, I’ll figure it out.” Marian said with frustration.

“Well, until you do, I think that you had better cool yourself off.” Marika said.

Marian knew that Marika was right, but she felt time was running short. With Qeran Kyle being dead, Palus Felitious would act, and if that act involved a public appearance, she needed to be there to kill him.

“I know, Marika, and I am concentrating on helping Amanxa and the other rebels get off of this moon. Please tell Blu that we have to secure a hideout for them on Tyhera. They will not be safe on Talula once we bust them out.”

“That’s an easy enough mission. How do you feel otherwise?” Marika asked.

“Tired, and a little guilty for leaving Anstractor the way I did. I’m so mad at Raf, but I have friends who will miss me. I thought about his sister, Aurora, and her cute, bubbly personality. Silent Frank, my drinking buddy, and even your Val. I can be such an emotional little
cruta
sometimes, I swear,” she opined.

“That emotional little
cruta
is the Marian we know and love. Stop trying to change. I know that I miss my Val something vicious; he won’t stay out my mind. I want to wrap this up soon so that I can return home to him. You do understand, don’t you Rhee?”

“How about tonight?” Marian asked.

“You mean to jump out tonight? What about you? I can’t just leave you here—” Marika began.

“Maker’s sake, Marika, you’ve done enough for me here to cause me to owe you for several lifetimes. Look, my friends are free, and the Ranalos are on the way here. The pendulum is swinging and Palus won’t escape it. What I need more than anything else from you is—”

Marian stopped and sighed. “I’m almost out of crystals, and I need Raf or Tayden to send me some more. If you can bring back a couple of Phaser Aces, I would kiss you, but I need the crystals to get to Palus. Please do this last favor for me Marika, and I promise you the world.”

“You promise things that aren’t yours to give, Marian VCA, but I will not argue. Jumping back means I can at least see my Val, and I will get a handful of crystals to help you finish your mission.”

Tyhera was an amazing planet, and so were its people, but Marika had spilled so much blood that she could almost see the stains on her hands whenever she looked at them. When she was a blade for hire, she would meditate for hours and pray to the makers to wash the memories from her mind. It wasn’t a perfect solution to her chosen black art, but it was enough to allow her to sleep at night. Now it was different, and she could still see the image of Kyle’s face being shredded with the exploding column.

“Stay safe sister, until I return,” she said to Marian and then signed off before she could reply.

Marian walked out to the bridge to try and clear her mind, and to try to think of a way to catch up with Palus. A pair of lovers walked by and they looked very much like a statesman and his mistress. Marian smiled at them, but the man noticed it and mistook her grin for one of invitation.

“Would you like to join us?” the husky man asked, and the Tyheran courtesan touched Marian’s forearm affectionately.

“Not tonight, my friends,” she replied to him, and she could feel the cynic inside of her being held back from laughing.

The man nodded and slipped an arm around his beau, then walked back towards the hotel in the center of the city. The courtesan, a Primian, kept looking back at Marian with lingering looks of want. It made her suspicious until she realized that the sex worker was probably on her fifth course of mood altering drugs and aphrodisiacs.

She turned back to the bridge and looked across it. Evening was upon them and the pink waters were now as deep a purple as the skies. Several lights came on and revealed another set of lovers on a bench, too engrossed in their kissing to notice her staring.

She watched them for a very long time before she realized she was crying. It was an embarrassing discovery and she hurried back to her hotel. She had sent Marika back to Anstractor to see her lover and to collect important crystals for the rescue mission. But she hadn’t been entirely honest. She found herself missing the touch of her husband, and seeing his face and hearing his voice.

For all their arguing he would always come to her, and despite the hell that was going on in Luca, he had stayed ever-present in her mind the entire time. She would feel weak when she thought of being without him for the rest of her life, but then she would feel stupid when she thought about sharing him with the other women that he admitted to being with. But it was there, that feeling of compromise, that somehow he would change and they would work it out. Oh, the way he held her, with hands like steel, and the way she would revert to being that young, high-spirited Baroness whenever their lips would touch.

Most nights when she stirred, she reached for him, and whenever she did something amazing she had to remind herself that she couldn’t call him up to brag to him. She didn’t need Rafian VCA – she needed no one – but she wanted him badly: physically, emotionally, and everything else in between. Most of all, she wanted to know that he missed her as much as she missed him. She had reacted, but that was how she was and he loved her for it—he had said as much—so why hadn’t he jumped in to find her? Why hadn’t he chased her here to let her know that he couldn’t live without her?

She whispered his name with a curse, trying to summon the hate, but all she kept thinking about was the night when he whisked her away to make her his wife. She stepped through the sliding glass doors and onto the shiny, reflective tile of the hotel lobby. Her reflection showed a slender, beautiful woman whose wrapped up hair and tear-streaked face would draw attention from anyone looking. She kept her face hidden and pressed the button for the elevator, hoping with all her heart that it would arrive empty.

When the elevator finally got to the lobby, opening to reveal no one inside, Marian ran in and jabbed her finger on the button for the 22
nd
floor. The tears were out of control and she was beginning to bawl, but no one stopped its ascent as it rose up to her room. “Thank the makers,” she whispered aloud when the doors opened up and she was even happier to find the hallway empty. She ran to her room door, put the code into the locking mechanism, and dove onto her bed as if her life depended on it.

This was the first time in ages that she had allowed herself to cry, and she bawled audibly as the loneliness settled in. Marika had been a distraction, a distraction that was now gone, and she was angry and disappointed that they had been gone for near a month and Rafian had not come looking for her.

~ * ~

The next day the signal Marian had been waiting for showed up on her comm-link. The Ranalos skiff had landed somewhere between Jemi and Astuif, and the Ranalos had set up their camp in preparation for the battle. She stole a hover-bike from a rack near her hotel and with her bag strapped across her back and dressed in a blue 3B suit, she blazed down the long bridge out of Jemi and onto the hilly plains of Talula.

She rode past shepherds that were out with their flock and an enormous graveyard that was fenced in by rose bushes. The bike was not as fast as she would have liked but it moved her quickly away from the city. When she glanced back for what would have been the tenth time, she saw that her hotel was the only thing on the horizon. She stayed away from the forests and the wild thorny bushes, since there were many predators on Talula that made those places their home.

When Marian was a girl, her parents used to take her to visit Talula during the second month of the long Tyheran summer. She was very young when they decided to stop making the trips, so her last recollection of it all was sitting amidst yellow flowers that were so tall, they appeared as trees to her.

She’d run through them with her hands outstretched, bending the stalks as she ran and trying to imagine herself as a Talulan rabbit. Now as the hover-bike flew over the same flowers, she viewed them in a much different way than she had as a child. The flowers were beautiful but hardy, very much like their moon and the people that had come there to live.

After she had been riding for quite some time, she felt lonely and bothered by the same landscape she had just been admiring. There were no ships in the sky, and while the sun was out and it was bright, she could only see flowers and hills spread all the way through to the horizon. If not for the compass and map she had on her comm, she would have been completely lost out there, unaware of where she was.