Galaxy Under Siege Page 7

  Karina nodded her head along with Jegra’s explication. So far it made perfect sense. And she was surprised by the fact that a muscle-bound Amazonian woman had such a keen intellect. But, then again, she knew better than to judge a book by its cover. And she was certain that whatever made this Jegra-woman tick meant she was likely to be one fascinating read.

  Still on the subject of teleportation, Jegra summed up the whole experience as best she could.

  “In effect,” Jegra relayed, “the energy beam destabilizes your particles—not destroys them, mind you. Once you’re turned into information, the teleporter system sends the information across the sea of dominoes...all the potential versions of ‘you’ that could possibly exist in the universe...in the form of a laser beam and then exploits the information so that it can be directed to a singular point at a different, separate location of space-time. The energy beam, in turn, tells the entangled particles, or dominoes, where to snap back into reality by triggering the collapse of the wave function. Subsequently, this allows your entangled self to manifest at the precisely calculated designation. And you re-appear at the exact spot where the final domino topples.” Seeing as how Karina’s eyes had begun to glaze over, Jegra took a breath and with a nonchalant wave of her hand, brought her little science lesson to a close. “It’s just that simple.”

  “It seems I’ll need to brush up on my quantum mechanics,” Karina said, a cordial smile forming on her lips.

  “I mean, I’m no expert, either,” Jegra assured her, trying not to sound conceited. “That’s just the summation I was given. At the end of the day, though, I suppose it’s true what they say.”

  Karina raised a curious eyebrow and waited for the empress to complete her thought.

  “Since you are your entangled self and your entangled self is you, wherever you go, there you are.” She chuckled at her own joke but then stopped herself when she realized Karina wasn’t sharing her same level of amusement. “Never mind,” Jegra said, brushing the topic aside for another time.

  “Yes, it’s all very fascinating. I’m sure our scientists will be quite keen on delving into all the new alien sciences we shall encounter. In the meantime, however, I really should be helping my people with the preparations. Thanks for your time, and I look forward to meeting you in person.” With that, she leaned backed, squinted long and hard at Jegra one last time and then flicked off the feed.

  Jegra looked over at Lianica. She placed both hands on her hips, arched her back and then let out a long sigh. “Well then. That went about as well as could be expected.”

  Lianica threw her hands on her hips and stared out of the viewscreen at the red planet rotating below. After several seconds of contemplative silence, she took a deep breath and exhaled. “I don’t trust that woman. She’s hiding something. I can feel it.”

  “Don’t be so paranoid,” Jegra said, trying her best not to sound overly stern.

  “It’s my job to be paranoid,” Lianica replied, her tone and demeanor brusque and to the point. “But this...isn’t paranoia. It’s something else.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Did you notice how she was acting...I don’t know...reticent? She didn’t divulge any information that our scanners wouldn’t have already detected. But how would she know precisely what to withhold or divulge, not knowing anything about our scanner?”

  “What are you suggesting?” Jegra asked, raising a curious eyebrow. She was genuinely curious, because even though she dismissed the awkwardness of the conversation, due to her blathering, she also knew that Lianica’s instincts were rarely wrong. In fact, Jegra had felt something was off too.

  “She’s asking us, in effect, to rescue her entire crew, yet she didn’t seem grateful in the least. In fact, just the opposite. In all honesty, your majesty, her manner of speaking seemed scripted to me. Which would only make sense if she knew we were coming or...”

  “Or what?” Jegra asked curtly.

  “Or if she’s been brainwashed.”

  “Brainwashed? By who? For what purpose?”

  “That’s the part I’m having trouble wrapping my head around. Maybe you’re right and I’m just being paranoid. But I’d rather be paranoid and safe than trusting and dead.”

  “In that case, you’d better get to the bottom of it.” Jegra winked at her with the cool signal of a superior giving orders to her subordinate without the need for unnecessary words and then spun on her heels and marched toward the exit.

  Lianica had Jegra’s full trust. She knew exactly what needed to be done, and if Jegra had needed to tell her what to do, then she wouldn’t be the best woman suited for the job.

  Fortunately, Lianica was the best officer Jegra had ever seen. Which is why she had handpicked her from a long list of candidates that desperately wanted the position of commanding the flagship of the empire.

  “Let’s get to work, people. We have guests coming for dinner and I want everyone on their best behavior.”

  When there was no response, Jegra paused in the entrance and turned around. She shot the entire bridge crew a hardened look and glowered at them as if to say, didn’t you hear me?

  “Yes, Your Grace,” came a cascade of replies.

  Jegra smiled and thought, that’s more like it.

  With that, she continued on her way, disappearing through the automated sliding doors which swooshed shut behind her.

  8

  The molten glow of the door cast a warm, pale orange light across Callestra’s skin as it heated to its melting point. It was the same door she’d stumbled upon just a few months ago. The very door she’d neglected to tell Rhadamanthus about. Just a little more, she thought to herself, her pointer finger firing off a concentrated laser. And soon they’d be free of this place.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t notice this door before,” Dakroth said as he focused his finger blast to a fine point. The Dygra crystal in his chest glowed hot pink as he pushed his energy level to its upper limits.

  “As I said,” Callestra groaned, as she, too, focused all her strength and energy on creating an exacting laser beam that converged on the same spot and effectively doubled their power output.

  When the crystal in her chest flared bright pink and then began pulsing softly, she stopped and placed both hands on her thighs, panting heavily as she paused to catch her breath before continuing.

  “It was covered with those barbed vines. I missed it the first time around. Luckily, you agreed to get off your lazy ass and venture out of the arena one more time, otherwise we would never have found our way out of here.”

  “Yes, well, all that lounging about doing a whole lot of nothing was getting rather tiresome.”

  Callestra laughed. “And here I thought it was because you realized how much you loved me and would do anything for me.” She straightened up and, one hand on her titled hips, her other arm falling gently behind the curvature of her hourglass form, she shot him a sultry look that demanded he agree.

  He turned to her and smiled. “Never doubt it for an instance, my luv,” he said in his most assertive voice. “You are, without a doubt, the best thing that's ever happened to me. Beautiful beyond compare, loyal to a fault, and someone whom I know I can always put my faith in. Callestra, when it comes to the matters of my heart, you have nothing to fear. I will always hold you in the highest regard.”

  That’s more like it, she thought. A confession of his feelings...and it sounded sincere. After all she’d done for him, she deserved at least that much.

  She smiled at him once more and brushed the hair out of her eyes as she studied the lines in his face. At a hundred and thirty-two, he was getting on in age. But somehow every crease and wrinkle made him look all the more distinguished.

  After their shared moment, they turned and ramped up their energy output.

  The door heated up even hotter and their chests began to glow so brightly it seemed as though the crystals would burn through their flesh. But if they didn’t keep up the output, they’d
never get through this confounded korridium door.

  Dakroth figured it had to be an extremely pure form of korridium, too, in order to withstand the intense laser heat better than any armor plating on any battle cruiser he’d ever seen.

  Determined to get through it, however, he dropped to one knee and gripped his left wrist with his right hand to better steady his laser. Callestra remained standing. Their two beams converged at the same point.

  “We’re almost through!” she said. “Just a little bit further.”

  “You said that three hours ago,” Dakroth said.

  “This time I can feel it.”

  “I sure hope so, because I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up without a recharge.”

  Another few seconds later and the korridium metal dripped to the floor, and a hole opened up. Seeing this, they both let out relieved gasps; they had finally breached the impossibly heat-resistant metal.

  “We need to make sure the hole is big enough for us to squeeze through,” Dakroth said, taking a step closer and really giving it his all. Beads of sweat rolled down his temple and cheek but he merely doubled down with determination and continued welding away at the door.

  Callestra finally let up and placed her hands on her knees again and panted heavily. Her chest heaved with each deep breath and once she’d caught her breath she said, “I’m spent.”

  Dakroth ceased his laser beam and took in a deep breath of the cool air. At least, he thought to himself, the air is one thing that wasn’t lethal in this place.

  “That ought to do it,” he said victoriously, brushing his hands together as if to dust himself off after a long day’s work. “Now all we have to do is wait for it to cool.”

  “How long will that take?” Callestra asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dakroth replied. “But I’m sure we can find something else to do to help bide the time.” His red eyes settled onto her and he grinned.

  She could already detect the subtle tone of prurience on his voice. “Oh, yeah?” Callestra asked, matching his grin with one of her own.

  She was enthralled by the idea of making love in their current condition—hot, sweaty, and well-seasoned with ash from the burned-up detritus of the vines and the grime of the dust from the arena.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  Before she knew it, his arms where around her waist and she was pressed into the side of the archway. Dakroth hoisted her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist. Soon enough they were doing what came most naturally to the both of them. Fucking like a Torvian weasel in heat.

  For whatever reason, though, this time seemed better than the last hundred times combined. She didn’t know if it was the excitement of the immediate moment coupled with the anticipation of gaining their freedom, or if it was something else, but whatever it was, she enjoyed every rugged thrust of his hips and every probing penetration of his tongue.

  She kissed him with a perfect blend of hot passion and wet sultriness and laughed with hot breath as he finished inside her. “Feel better?” she asked him, kissing his lips once again before he could answer.

  “The best I’ve felt in ages,” he replied. When he didn’t immediately pull out of her, she moaned with delight and sank down onto him, plastering his lips with another round of kisses.

  After their quick, yet satisfying, round of fornication, she slowly climbed off him and lowered her legs back to the ground. Untangling herself from his neck, she brushed down her deerskin loincloth and then looked over at the door to check on how well it was cooling.

  Although the edges were now a soft orange, it was clearly still hot enough to catch a stick on fire, definitely hot enough to do some serious damage to one’s skin.

  Anxious to get out of this place, she tapped her foot impatiently and folded her arms under her chest. “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think we’ve waited long enough. But, just to be safe, let’s assume that once we step beyond this barrier, the whole resurrection cycle thing ends. I have a feeling that whatever is keeping us immortal ends here.” He nodded at the door and she nodded in response, agreeing with his assessment.

  Although neither of them could explain it, she knew that he was right. There was this unspoken feeling...a sensation that one felt that, like a clairvoyant having a full-blown premonition, you just knew it was the place itself that was all wrong.

  And as much fun as all the dying and coming back to life business had been, she knew it was time to move to the next chapter of whatever this nightmare world had in store for them.

  CALLESTRA WAS THE FIRST to squeeze through the opening. Her bare shoulder accidentally brushed the edge of the metal door and she cried out in pain as it seared her skin.

  “Be careful,” she warned the emperor, glancing over her still sizzling shoulder at him as he followed her lead, “it’s still hot.”

  Once they were both safely through, they stepped out the other side of the opening and into a spacious valley surrounded by mountains and lush green forest land mottled by glistening lakes that stretched into the distance of the ring world as far as the eye could see.

  “What is this place?” Callestra asked aloud.

  Dakroth turned a full 360-degree circle, scanning their surroundings. It appeared to be some kind of ring world, more massive than anything he’d ever seen constructed before.

  Not even the Seyfferian ring habitat, known as Prytaneous, perhaps the greatest structure in the Commonwealth, could match the sheer marvel that he beheld with his own two eyes.

  While Prytaneous was about three hundred times the surface area of Dagon Prime, and was wrapped around an entire moon which served to help anchor it, this one was, given his roughest estimate, nearly three hundred million times bigger. What’s more, it seemed to have its own white dwarf star at the center of it.

  “It must be H’aaztre’s lost planet,” he mused aloud to himself.

  “You mean, Aldebaran?” Callestra took a cautious step forward and scanned their surroundings.

  Surprisingly enough, none of the poisonous or lethal flora they’d been plagued by seemed to exist on this side of the door. A huge relief, to be sure. Yet, at the same time, it still had an eeriness about it. They could see no evidence of animals anywhere, and no insects either. Everything was strangely...silent. Deathly so.

  “I don’t see any other possibilities,” answered Dakroth.

  “But the engineering it would take to build such a structure...” she said, admiring the fact that they stood on the surface of a ring world virtually impossible to build, given current technology they were familiar with. Somehow, though, an ancient race had managed to construct it using methods that were only theoretical to her—speculative at best.

  “My dear, you almost seem taken by this place. Don’t forget, it’s still our prison.”

  “No, my dear Dakroth,” she said, turning to him, a calculating smile spreading across her lips. “It’s a beautiful new world for the Great Lord Emperor to conquer.”

  He smiled in return. But as much as he’d like to steal H’aaztre’s own ring world right out from under him, he had other plans. Merely snatching another’s property from them and gloating didn’t send a powerful enough message. And Dakroth wanted nothing more than to put the gilded imp in his place.

  “I think you may be right, my dear Callestra. It’s time I stopped resting on my laurels and showed this imposter who the real Lord of the Galaxy is.”

  Out of the blue, a sudden blast of wind crashed into them and they had to brace themselves.

  “What in bloody Helios?!” Callestra shouted over the loud turbines, shielding her eyes as her hair whipped frantically about her. She clung to Dakroth’s elbows, her fingers digging into his blue flesh so she wouldn’t blow away.

  Once she could crack her eyes open, she looked up to see an egg white-colored shuttle craft hovering over them. A moment later, the shuttle set down less than a dozen meters away from them and the angel-wing door swung open.

/>   Dakroth and Callestra turned to see a hoary bearded satyr standing in the opening, grinning at them.

  The old goat hopped out and skipped up to them and, upon recognizing them both, abruptly stopped in his tracks. After a moment’s reflection, his baby blue eyes sparkled and he began to bellow with laughter.

  “Rhadamanthus, my good chap. Is that really you?!”

  “It is I, you old fiend,” Dakroth answered in a jovial tone, a diplomatic smile spreading across his Prussian blue lips.

  “You know this foul creature?” Callestra asked Dakroth, a hint of disgust on her voice. She wrinkled her nose in revulsion at the sworn enemy of her people.

  “Why of course I do, my dear. Everyone knows the infamous Grendok of Galliforn.”

  “You’re Grendok?” Callestra asked, taken aback by the unassuming visage of the legendary satyr. “The war criminal?”

  “I know, I know...” Grendok said in an aristocratic manner, stroking his chin hairs as a roguish grin spread across his caprine lips, “I’m taller than you imagined.”

  The joke going over her head, Callestra shrugged. She really hadn’t given much thought regarding the notorious criminal’s appearance. All she knew was that he was the galaxy’s most wanted fugitive and was more slippery to get your hands on than a Brillaxian eel—which explains why he’d never been caught.