NOVEL NEXT 2-25: Taking A Captive
"I can't believe you're seriously considering this," Yana said, glaring up at Jeraj and still clutching her cauterized arm.
I briefly wondered what that would feel like. Like were the pain receptors still pissed off because they'd been separated from the rest of the arm? Did somebody who had a limb removed by a plasma sword have phantom pain like some of the stuff I'd heard from Marines back in Terran space who decided to go for a cybernetic arm rather than getting one regrown for them?
Turns out the cybernetic stuff was way more useful for going into a hot war zone than having a regrown human arm. Though they did complain that the regrown human arm was a lot better for the kinds of things they wanted to do when they were in port on a space station.
"Of course I can do this," Jeraj said, looking down at her. "I'm a prince consort."
"You're not going to be a prince consort for long if you decide to betray the empress," Yana hissed. "You know what she does to prince consorts who betray her."
"We'll protect you," Varis said, speaking in a low voice and glancing around. I wondered if she was worried about somebody listening in on us. It would be trivial enough to have an almost microscopic drone floating around here trying to listen in. Unlike back at the tower, we had no way of figuring out if there were any microscopic drones flitting around trying to mess with us.
"Look, it's a simple enough choice for the two of you. This can go one of two ways."
Yana turned and glared at me. Which was totally fair. I had just gone full livisk on her and chopped part of her forearm off, after all.
But it was a bit of ancient wisdom from humanity that also seemed to work well enough when dealing with the livisk: Once word got around that you'd gone soft, it was nothing but work, work, work.
"What choice is that, human?" she said, though she seemed surprisingly calm about everything.
Calmer than I would've been if I just had a hunk of my arm chopped off. Fucking livisk.
"Your brother is a prince consort, right?" I said.
"He is," she said.
"And I've run up against three prince consorts so far."
"You have," she said.
"And two out of those three are dead," I continued, hoping she'd start to understand where I was going with this.
"That's what the stories say."
"Oh, it's much more than the stories saying it," I said. "Like I don't want to sound like I have too much of a puffed-up sense of self-importance here, but I was there when I killed both of those bastards. Granted, I didn't know what I was doing with the first one, but still."
"What point are you trying to make here, human?" she hissed at me.
"I would think that would be obvious," Varis said.
"Why are you speaking?" Yana said, glaring up at her.
Varis brought herself up to her full height. "I am General Varis t'Thal. Noble by birth. Sister by marriage to the empress. Sure, it was a marriage to an incompetent asshole who was better dead than alive, but I am still sister by marriage to the empress. The last time I checked, the head of a major house with her own private military outranks a sister by marriage to the empress of merely a major house."
Yana stared up at her and blinked a couple of times, clearly surprised of the outburst, but she also fell back like she didn't want to be anywhere close to Varis when she was acting like this.
Meanwhile, I was here for this. It was totally hot.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Varis said, looking over at me. Her cheeks colored a slightly darker shade of blue.
"It's hot when you get all commanding like that, baby," I said.
"Just like it's hot when you get all murdery on my enemies," she said.
"Come here," I said, and I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in to give her a quick kiss. A quick kiss that turned into a longer kiss. Again, I had that itching between my shoulder blades where I worried somebody would take the opportunity of me being distracted smooching on my hot alien girlfriend to take a shot at us. Again, nothing really happened.
I pulled away and turned to stare down at Yana, who was blinking and staring between the two of us in obvious astonishment.
"Anyway," Varis said, smoothing out her uniform that definitely didn't have any power armor on it. Something I was going to rectify the next time around. "You are talking about this like you have three choices when it is actually a binary. You think you can capture us and take us off to the Imperial Palace. In reality the only options open to you are that we die or you die."
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She turned and looked over at me. She licked her lips. Which told me she was getting hot and bothered again. Probably because she was thinking about all the times I'd gone into a murderous rage on her behalf. Apparently that got her going.
"And given that my general consort here is currently undefeated when it comes to going up against a prince consort, you can rest assured that your death is all but assured."
Yana stared at us, and then looked to her brother. He sighed and rolled his eyes.
"I'll admit it is hot when the human starts posturing," Jeraj said. "But you've already convinced me, and that's all you need to do. Yana here is going to come along whether or not she wants to. It's not like she has much of a choice."
"Good," Varis said, "So we can move ahead with taking you captive."
"Oh, by all means," he said, and he reached down to his side and pulled his sword out, bringing it up and around.
"You'll never take me alive!" he yelled.
Varis moved in as he did a play act version of bringing his sword down and around. Meanwhile, I tensed with my own plasma sword in hand, staring at him and watching for any sign he might try to actually take a swing at her. I was well aware there was a strong possibility somebody could act like they were going to go along with our plan, and then he would use that to actually take a shot at Varis.
But he looked like he was clumsy with his sword at best, and not a very good actor either. Not the kind of guy who spent a bunch of time in the sparring room practicing with the thing. So when he brought it down and around and close to Varis's neck, it was easy enough for her to move in and around him.
I saw everything moving in slow motion. I could only stare in wonder at how Varis moved, grabbing his arm and punching the wrist on his sword hand to send it clattering to the ground.
"Ow," he said as time sped back up around me. "You don't have to be so realistic."
But Varis was already behind him and had a plasma pistol pointed at his head. The tip was glowing and humming.
The dude looked nervous, which I could totally understand. There was no universe where having a plasma pistol pointed to the side of your head while it was glowing and letting out that malicious ominous hum was anything other than the kind of thing that might have you shitting your pants, or your armor, or maybe his cape.
Whatever.
"What are you doing?" he called out, and it was with all the dramatic accuracy of a high school production of Our Town.
"Selling it," Varis said with a grin. "The least you could do is the same."
"Oh, woe is me," Jeraj cried out. "I've been taken captive. This vicious woman is going to kill me if I don't surrender."
"Okay. If that's the best you can do selling it then it might be better if you just shut the fuck up," Varis said.
There was the Varis I knew and loved. The one I'd met in the corridors of the Alamaraine when the two of us were doing our best to bash each other's heads in. Back when the whole ship was exploding all around us and I wasn't sure if I wanted to beat her to death, shoot her, take her captive, or kiss her.
"Everybody's a critic," he muttered, "But I'll have you know I was considered the critic's choice at the production of All For the Empress in the Imperial Palace."
"Yeah, because you're a prince consort and everybody in the audience knows they're going to be under increased scrutiny, if not a death threat, if they don't applaud for you," Varis said, "That gravy train is over if you're coming to stay in my tower."
"Whatever," he said, rolling his eyes, "As long as I don't have to go near the empress again."
"Can't promise that, but we'll do our best," Varis said.
She started pulling back to the darkness Jeraj and Yana had appeared from, but immediately all weapons were trained on us again. They all had that same ominous glow. I really didn't like it when that glow was pointed at me.
"I'm starting to get really tired of this," I said, rolling my eyes.
"Hold on," the woman up on the debris field said, holding her hand up and sounding supremely irritated. "You're not going to escape with the prince consort. That's my life if you do that."
"Well, maybe you should've thought of that back when I was threatening you the first time around," I called up to her. "Now we're going to get out of here nice and easy and none of you are going to fire a shot at us if you want the prince consort's brains to stay in his head and not splashed all over the Undercity."
The woman stared down at us for a long moment, then a smile started to spread across her face. I didn't like that a smile was starting to spread across her face. It was the kind of smile that said she knew something I didn't.
"Fine. Kill him," she said.
"What?" I said.
"Excuse me?" Jeraj said.
She shrugged. "I'm taking a chance, but he's annoying me. Plus he's not one of the favorite prince consorts. The empress might actually say I'm doing her a favor if we come back and he's been taken care of. She might even go easy on your torture if one of you is the one who pulls the trigger."
"Listen here, you bitch," Jeraj said. "I came down here because Yana dragged me here and..."
"Shut up," the woman said. "You of all people should know sending somebody on a mission like this is as much a pretense for getting rid of them as it's a pretense for making sure you do your job once in a while."
"You can't talk to me like that," he said. "I am a prince consort."
"I'll talk to you however I please," she said. "Because you're going to die before you have a chance to get back to the palace and tell the empress what I'm telling you. As long as she doesn't find out, she can pretend it's all above board."
I glanced over to Varis. Well then. It would seem we weren't the only ones who were operating under a don't ask, don't tell policy when it came to doing things she'd rather not know about.
Though don't ask, don't tell was an unfortunate choice of phrase considering the unique difficulties Jeraj was going through with the empress.
"The more time I spend around this asshole, the more I think I'm going to get a nice promotion from this," she said. "I get an excuse to kill a prince consort. It's unfortunate that you were shot by Varis before we had to kill her, Jeraj. Though that's another pesky family connection to a prince consort that I'm sure the empress will be happy to have tied up."
"You bitch," Jeraj growled, his body practically shivering and shaking.
"Say what you want," she said with a shrug. "But you're one of the worst prince consorts in the empress's harem. Deal with it."
"You bitch!" he shrieked, clearly losing it.
And then he really surprised me by breaking free from Varis's grasp. He brought his sword up and around and time seemed to slow down again. I brought my own plasma sword around, ready to take care of business if it turns out he was going after Varis. But he charged forward at the livisk standing all around the debris pile and leapt through the air, getting the kind of airtime that would've been the envy of any basketball player in the IBA.
Like we're talking this was anime protagonist levels of leaping through the air with a sword ready to do some serious damage to his enemies.
Then he landed, and death followed him.
"Holy shit," I breathed as I watched him work.
Clearly he was a much better actor than I gave him credit for.