www.thevalentinechronicles.com presents:
The Witch
by Paul L Mathews
The Troika was an old cutter bordering on antiquation, but her age
belied her speed as she swooped and dived between the warring Oridian and Long
Knife starships. And just as the Troika contrasted with the massive
battleships and tiny fighters, so too did the utter silence contrast vividly
with the colour and movement around her. Silent explosions blossomed and
died like flowers in the fall; invisible maser beams shattered lumbering
capital ships; intelligent torpedoes dived and swarmed between the warring
vessels and crew were ripped from their depressurised ships like spilt blood.
To the Troika’s portside a crippled destroyer gave its last by ramming a
dreadnought, the bigger vessel speared like a fish. To the Troika’s aft a flight of fighters was caught in the concussive fury
of an exploding frigate. To the Troika’s
starboard side a squad of ugly, blade-like Long Knife vessels leached onto an
ornate Oridian battleship as the Long Knife marines onboard disembarked and
began their assault. And in front of the Troika,
the battle raged as far as the eye could see, all centred around
the glittering jewel that was the planet Oridia.
Diving to one side, the Troika deployed her own countermeasures:
tiny pods that confused pursuing torpedoes and fooled them into detonation. But
all the while she was stalked by the Long Knife flagship. Implacable and
silent, the mammoth vessel, built in the semblance of some bastard-sword, cut
through the battle as it shrugged off torpedoes, masers and fighters. It was
only a matter of time until it caught her.
Regardless, the little ship
pushed on, her thrusters opened to the maximum as her pilot tried desperately
to keep the ship—and crew—in one piece.
#
The compact flight-deck was
all noise and colour. Klaxons bayed for attention as systems—pushed to their
limits—begged for respite. Alarms flashed red. Status bars glowed green. Fuel
readouts burned a deepening amber. Monitors flashed
bright white as explosions flourished about the vessel.
Terror-stricken, Tatiana
Valentine tried to ignore it all, the sky-blue of her half-human, half-Oridian
skin shimmering with sweat as she wrestled with the Troika’s controls.
She couldn’t focus. The
ship was shaking so badly she felt her teeth ache. The constant assault of
light and noise from the instrumentation was overwhelming, and she was sure she
could smell burning.
Oh God, she thought, are we hit? Oh, please no, I don’t want to die!
“Matinee?” she shouted over
the cacophony.
“It’s
okay, your highness, it’s just a fire in the main relay casing,” replied her
co-pilot, Matinee. Sat behind Tatiana, the thirty-something punk—all tattoos
and Mohican hair—span in her chair and grabbed an extinguisher. Seconds later,
the tiny fire was doused.
“Matinee? Please,” Tatiana implored, turning slightly so she could
shout over her shoulder without looking away from her consoles.
“You’re doing great,
Princess, really,” Matinee replied as she turned back to her engineering
station. Her accent was English with a hint of the East-end.
Tatiana felt a hysteria
rising within her. I’m supposed to be having a painting lesson today, not
fighting for my life! “I can’t do
this!” she shouted. “Where’s everybody else?”
“You have to do this!” Matinee shouted as she concentrated on her own
instruments, her pierced face and husky voice intense and forthright. “Boyd’s
with Ivan in med-bay, your sister’s cack-handed, and Vast’s nursing the
engines…”
The alarm bleated in their
ears. Damn it! Fighters! Tatiana
despaired as she looked to the scanner. Six fighters were slicing their way
toward them like scalpels.
The Troika bucked and shrieked as the fighters spat at it, their venom
and contempt scored in the little
cutter’s hide by maser beams. More klaxons sounded, and Tatiana was
ripped from her stasis. The ship couldn’t take another hit like that.
Leaning hard, she pushed
the Troika into a turn the
compensators shouldn’t have been able to handle, and raced headfirst toward an
Oridian destroyer. Holding her nerve, she waited until the destroyer opened
fire, the volley of maser beams lancing past the Troika before—the
pursuing fighters destroyed or crippled—she pulled the Troika out of its collision course with the destroyer. She avoided
collision with the bigger vessel by such a narrow margin that the two metal
hides grazed each other, sparks cascading in the Troika’s wake.
“…
And nobody else on this bloody ship could have done that.” Matinee said with a
dark smile.
Tatiana ignored her. How has this happened? Is this some
sort of uprising? It sure looks like it—but these ships
aren’t from Oridia.
“Who are these people?” Tatiana pitched the Troika into a
spiralling dive between two Oridian cruisers as the bigger ships engaged a Long
Knife dreadnought. “Why are they trying to kill us?”
“They’re the Long Knives.
Been after Oridia for centuries, and, judging by those
markings, that flagship looks like it belongs to the Blind Admiral.”
“The
Blind who? What..?”
“Not now,
Tatty—concentrate!”
Tatiana looked to the
scanners, and her heart sank.
The flagship was gaining.
It was too much. Tears
stung her eyes. Father. Oh God, where are you? The last words
she’d heard him speak came back to her,
‘Get them out of here,’
he’d ordered their Uncle, Ivan, as the palace—their home—burned down around them. ‘Get them on the Troika—we’ll hold them off.’ Then he and her mother had armed
themselves. ‘Go. Go now. We’ll see you on the farm.’ He’d looked every bit of
his sixty-plus years as the weight of a world at war fell upon his Herculean
shoulders.
That was the last she’d
seen of her parents as they strode off to face the insurgents—a heaving mass of
Oridia’s peasantry that had battered its way into the palace was tearing the
place apart.
Oh, Father, what have I done? Why did I leave you?
Finally breaking, Tatiana
cried.
#
“Tatiana?” Katarina
Valentine yelled over the ship’s ‘net. “Can’t you keep this damned ship steady?
Uncle Ivan’s hurt down here, y’know?”
“What? What’s going on?”
Katarina thought there was a constricted element in Tatiana’s voice, as though
she were crying. “Isn’t he stabilised yet? Boyd said it was just a
flesh-wound!”
Katarina couldn’t answer
straight away. She didn’t quite know how to describe what had happened to Ivan.
She could only stand and watch the developments unfold around the examination
table for now, while feeling altogether useless. She held two Nandomine packs loosely in one hand.
There’d been a savage
enough fire-fight as their bodyguards—fighting to get Ivan and the twins to the
Troika in one piece—had gunned down
the marauding peasantry, and Ivan had
taken a glancing blow. But this? she thought as she watched Uncle Ivan convulsing. The old
man was thrashing, thick white hair plastered to his sweating brow. His massive
frame—more than capable of overpowering most, even in his sixties—bucked and
kicked and pushed as Boyd and Doll Two tried to stabilise him. This doesn’t make sense. He’s shrugged off
worse shaving cuts.
“Katarina?” Tatiana insisted.
“Nandomine,” Boyd demanded.
Katarina thrust the one-use
needles into his big hands. The brute didn’t even acknowledge her. A bullish
Scot with a stocky girth, he was kitted out in body-armour and a kilt. His face
read like a war story punctuated with scars. She didn’t like him. At all.
“Katarina?” Tatiana demanded again. “How’s Uncle Ivan?”
Katarina finally managed to
respond. “He’s in a lot of pain.”
As if to underline the
statement, Ivan bucked on the table, his back arching. The white of his wide,
stark eyes matched that of his “sans chin” beard. Something half-way between a
cry of anguish and defiance escaped from behind his clenched teeth.
“Hurt?” Tatiana pressed. “How? He was okay when we came aboard.”
“Look!” Katarina snapped,
“I don’t know, okay?”
“Well, who does know,
Kat?” Tatiana snapped back. “Boyd? Boyd, are you there?”
“I’m… here, Princess,” Boyd
replied, still struggling to hold down Ivan. The big man let out an agonised
howl as he tried to claw at his clothes.
Useless meat-head, thought Katarina. Father would know.
“What’s wrong… Oh God…!”
Katarina felt the Troika
lurch violently and shudder. “Tatty!” Katarina shouted into the intercom as she
watched Boyd and Doll Two struggle to stay upright, “Will you please—”
“You know where the
flight-deck is if you think you can do better, Kat,” was Tatiana’s acidic
reply. “Boyd, what’s wrong with Ivan?”
Boyd expression
darkened still as he watched the featureless Doll Two inject the Nandomine into
the old man, the android moving with typical android grace and precision. “I’m…
I’m not sure, Princess,” the Scot said, his voice loaded with confusion and
anger, “but I can guess.”
He continued holding Ivan
down, grimacing with the effort. Even as the drug took hold, Ivan fought it
with typical grit and stubbornness. Finally he was still, and—the med-bay
shuddering as Tatiana no doubt put the vessel through another barrel-roll—Boyd
took a firm hold of the old man’s shirt, ripping it open. “Damn,” he muttered.
“I was hoping I was wrong.”
Katarina could barely
believe her eyes. A Japanese dragon tattoo, bright and stylised, was moving
about Ivan’s torso, squirming and racing across his skin. Its eyes were alive
with mischief, if not malice, and Katarina fancied it smiled and winked at her
as it continued to swim across Ivan’s body. Red welts and boils festered in its
wake.
Katarina was mesmerised. In
all the fairy tales, gothic stories and ghostly tales she enjoyed so much,
she’d never seen anything like this—yet here it was, as real and as vivid as
ink on a page, ravaging her Uncle.
Despite herself, she felt a
slight thrill. “What..?” she said, “What is that? What does it mean?””
“It means,” Boyd hissed as
his hand fell to the various pouches on his military webbing, “That we’re in
worse trouble than I thought.”
With that he drew a knife—a
small, military model—from his belt and brandished it as he leaned over Ivan,
raising the weapon as if ready to stab down.
“No!” Katarina shouted,
lurching forward. What’s he doing? Is he going to stab Uncle?
She tried to reach Boyd,
only for Doll Two to intercept, grabbing her firmly by both arms and holding
her back. “Now now, Mistress Katarina,” the android said gently, “I’m quite
sure Mister Boyd knows exactly what he’s doing.”
Katarina—despite
herself—acquiesced. Putting her trust in Doll Two, as she always did, she
watched helplessly as Boyd—his big, rough hands as steady as could be expected
with the ship bucking and lurching—took his knife to Ivan.
The tip of the wicked blade
bit into the old man’s skin, and the Scotsman, face creased in concentration, began scoring a shape into Ivan’s chest. Soon
it became apparent he was drawing a stylised heart, with some tribal flourishes
leading off it at right angles.
No sooner was the heart
drawn in blood, than the tattooed dragon, its face transforming into an
expression of terror and pain, started to convulse and shudder. Katarina could
swear she heard a howling—a vague, distant howling that seemed to echo from a
distant valley—as the creature shrivelled and contorted before her eyes, the
colour fading until the tattoo vanished altogether.
Katarina stared in
astonishment.
That, she thought, was awesome. “What is that?” she
asked, mystified.
Boyd didn’t get chance to
answer. “Katarina? Boyd?” It was Tatiana again, her
voice urgent and querulous, “I think you’d better get up here!”
#
Tatiana span in her chair
to see Boyd and Katarina enter the flight-deck—but it was already too late.
The Long Knife flagship had
caught the Troika, and now huge
magnetic clamps held the tiny vessel in
place, lengths of monstrous chain reeling it in like a fish. Above them, the
Ragnorak of the flagship’s holding-bay was about to swallow them whole.
“I tried, Boyd! Really I
tried!” Tatiana said, feeling wretched as she struggled to control her voice.
“…But it was too fast!”
“It’s
okay, Princess, it’s okay.”
He moved to lean over the Troika’s controls and pushed against Tatiana as he did so, his flak-vest pressing into her as he looked up and out of the flight-deck. Tatiana felt her pulse quicken a little, and she blushed, looking away. She caught sight of Matinee smirking at her and turned away sharply as the punk winked.
“It's no use, Boyd,”
Matinee said. “They’ve got us clamped good an’ proper.”
“Okay, let’s get off the
flight-deck—there’s nothing we can do here.” Boyd leaned back. He took hold of
Tatiana by the arms and looked her in the eyes. “You did great, Tatiana,
really,” he said, and she thought she was going to drown in his dark eyes right
there. “We’d have been blown to bits if you hadn’t been flying the Troika.”
“What? You’re
kidding…right?” her sister protested. “She gets us captured and you say ‘well
done’?”
Tatiana didn’t have to look
at her to know she was seething. Typical Katarina.
“Believe me, Katarina,”
Boyd said, “if I’m right about who’s on that ship, there’s nothing Tatiana
could have done. …Or anybody else for that matter. “Now, come on—we’ve got work
to do.”
#
The main airlock—like the
rest of Troika—was old, but clean and
well maintained. Katarina knelt by a bulkhead as she watched the rest of the
crew gather. From Boyd and Matinee, to Vast—seven Amazonian feet of bright red
tattooed bitch—and Doll Three—a military version of the android in med-bay—they
were all here. Tatiana dithered on the periphery of the room, fiddling with her
hair, an absent look on her face—a sure sign she was nervous. Only Doll Two and
Ivan’s cyborg dog, Stalin, were absent, having elected to stay with the old man
in med-bay.
How are we gonna get out of this? Katarina thought. There’s,
what? five of us here? She let her head sink into
her hands. What the Hell’s going on? Where’s Father? Is he dead?
The conspiratorial whisper
intruded on her turmoil: “Hey Kat, wanna cig?”
Katarina turned to see
Matinee hunker down beside her. Her favourite amongst the bodyguards, Katarina smiled
as best she could at the Earther.
“Um, no. I’d better not,” Katarina whispered, looking at the
cigarette regrettably. She didn’t usually say ‘no’, but now wasn’t the right
time. “Y’know what Uncle Ivan’s like…”
Matinee looked up, her
attention caught by something above them. Katarina looked as well, to see Vast looming over them. A mute, she raised an inquisitive
eyebrow at Matinee.
“The Long Knives, Vast,”
Matinee said, as if reading her mind,. “It looks like
they’re in league with the revolutionaries somehow. Looks like they’ve finally
made their move…”
Katarina’s brow furrowed.
She was sure she’d heard something about these revolutionaries. Gemma—her best
friend and daughter of the Terran ambassador—was always asking how the Oridian
royalty had been trying to deal a fairer hand to the peasant classes, about how
they were trying to diffuse their growing disenchantment and the rise of
violent activism. Katarina—sheltered and ignorant of such matters—never had an
answer.
Nor, it suddenly occurred
to Katarina, had her parents, obviously.
“An’ I don’t think the Long
Knives are alone either.” Boyd continued. “I think The Witch is with them.”
Matinee didn’t respond
straight away, and Katarina saw something in punk’s face she’d never seen
before: Fear. Even the normally inscrutable Vast looked faintly disturbed.
“The
Witch?” Matinee said finally. “Shit.
Isn’t she dead?”
“Apparently not,” Boyd
replied.
“Who’s this ‘Witch’?”
Katarina demanded.
“She’s an old friend of the
family,” Matinee replied, and Katarina detected the sarcasm there. “We thought
your father had killed her years ago. What makes you think she’s here, Boyd?”
“We caught one of her
dragons on Ivan,” Boyd replied.
“Did you kill it?” Matinee
asked.
Boyd shrugged. “Christ
knows. I know we drove it away, but whether it’s actually dead…”
“So what do we do now?”
Tatiana asked Boyd.
“Me, Vast an’ Doll Three
are going in there,” Boyd replied as he jerked his finger back toward the
airlock door. “We’re gonna board the Long Knives before they board us.”
“Board them?” Tatiana grabbed at the Scotsman’s arm.
Katarina nearly snorted in
derision. Tatiana was so into Boyd it wasn’t even funny. An’ he was what? Thirty five? Wasn’t all that pretty
either.
“Aye. We need to get you and the Troika out of here,” Boyd said, taking hold of Tatiana’s hand and
moving it from his arm gently, “and the only way we can do that is to disable
the flagship. From the inside.”
Matinee smiled. “You dressing up as Stormtroopers too?”
“Not today.” Boyd smiled
back. Grim and heavy, it betrayed his apprehension.
“Shame,” Matinee said with
a wink, “The Wookie look suits you.”
Boyd turned back to Tatiana
and took her arms again. “Tatiana, I need you to get back to the flight-deck
and be ready, okay? When I give the signal we’re gonna need to get outta this
holding bay quickly, understand?”
Katarina watched as Tatiana
tried to speak, only to choke on the words and nod instead.
“Take care of her,” Boyd
urged, turning back to Matinee.
“Don’t worry, Boyd—we’ll be fine,” Katarina said, pointedly,
her jibe earning a sharp, withering glare.
“Did you bring the
aerosol?” Boyd asked Matinee.
“Yup,” Matinee replied.
“Then you know what to do.
Good luck.”
Matinee and Boyd exchanged
a brief, silent instruction: Be careful.
Then the Boyd opened the airlock, the iris valve door dilating as its hydraulics hissed and groaned. On the other side of the door a surprised unit of Long Knife engineers were setting up cutting equipment, their black armour flashed with red and bedecked in cumbersome tools. They were gunned down immediately, afforded no chance of survival by Boyd’s heavy SMG, Vast’s two pistols and Doll Three’s shoulder mounted masers. The report from these weapons boomed about the airlock, battering Katarina’s ears and making Tatiana, hands going to her ears, cry out in surprise as the Long Knives died in utter silence. Whatever grimaces the dead engineers allowed themselves in death were concealed behind their stoic armoured masks, and they fell to the floor—some of the svelte bodies still twitching—whilst Boyd, Vast and Doll Three pushed on, weapons still blazing.
The engineers may have been despatched easily, but Katarina could see a squad of marines lurking behind them. Bulkier in their augmented armour, but still as silent, their weapons were at the ready. These would be—Katarina knew—a different proposition.
The airlock slammed shut, cutting off the sound of the escalating gun-battle, and Katarina found herself begrudgingly admitting that Boyd was actually pretty brave.
No sooner had the airlock hissed shut than Matinee stepped up to the door, and used the aerosol to spray a symbol on the metal—the same symbol Boyd had carved into Ivan’s chest.
#
Tatiana and Katarina ran after Matinee as the punk sprinted through the Troika.
“What was that you sprayed on the airlock?” Tatiana asked. Her voice was even and measured, a life-time of horse-riding, fencing and gymnastics having kept her pretty fit. In contrast the wheezing Katarina was struggling to keep up.
“I don’t know, exactly,” Matinee answered. She didn’t
seem to be struggling with the sprint across the
length of the Troika despite the smoking. “It’s some kinda
magic shit. Your Dad and your Uncle used it to ward
off the Witch back in the day. Don’t know why it works, but it does.”
“When did they meet her?”
Katarina asked through panting breaths.
And Tatiana, despite the
dire straits they found themselves in, shared her sister’s curiosity. Father
and Ivan always refused to talk about their past, and both she and Katarina
were greatly intrigued by these little glimpses into the days before they
settled on Oridia and Father married into the royal
family.
“They met her on Oridia,”
Matinee said. “Back then she was known as the Witch of Bleakwinter. The Royal Family—your
grandparents—hired Ivan and your Dad, who were mercenaries—”
“Mercenaries!” Tatiana knew Daddy and Ivan knew how to look after
themselves, but mercenaries..?
“Yeah. The Royal Family hired ‘em to protect your mum from the
Witch, who was terrorising her.”
“Why” asked Katarina
“Dunno. No one knows. But
they dealt with her. Your Dad always swore he’d killed her, though…”
“Is she dangerous?” Tatiana
asked. Suddenly, despite her self-assurances that Boyd would be okay, she
feared for his life. Acutely.
Matinee laughed, but didn’t
answer.
By now they’d finally
reached the corridor leading to the flight-deck. Before them
lay the flight-deck door.
It was covered in frost.
“What the…” breathed
Tatiana.
“Why’s it suddenly so cold
in here?” Katarina gasped, her breath steaming as she
spoke.
Matinee looked about them,
and Tatiana looked too. Just like the flight-deck door, the corridor walls were
frosty. Tatiana touched one. The cold bit her fingertips.
“I’ve got a bad feeling
about this,” Matinee muttered as she turned to the twins. “We’ve got to get out
of here.”
“What? Why?” Tatiana cast
sight around once again, trying desperately to see something she might have
missed.
But it was too late.
The door hissed open,
shards of ice splintering from its surface, revealing a figure glittering in
the corridor’s artificial light.
Her skin was sky-blue, just
like Tatiana and Katarina, and her exposed curves were covered in frost as she
spilled out of a brass, two piece outfit. Two tattooed dragons swam and
gambolled about her azure body, moving over naked thighs, belly, and arms. The
dragons stared at Matinee and the twins, laughing silently.
This, Tatiana realised, had
to be the Witch.
“So,” the Witch said, “you
must be Gregor’s other kids. It’s nice to meet you. Finally.”
Her expression shifted immediately, going from one of feigned geniality to
utmost contempt. “Go,” she whispered.
Instantly the two dragons
shot down her legs to swim over her bare feet and onto the deck, moving across
the metal just as they had moved about her skin. Tatiana thought, absently,
that maybe she should run. But she couldn’t. She was mesmerised.
Matinee, however, was not.
“Run!” the bodyguard
shouted as she pushed at the twins, putting all her weight into it as she
shoved them forward.
They fled, racing headlong
up the corridor. Behind her, Tatiana was vaguely aware of Matinee stopping and
bringing down a blast-door. Stopping, Tatiana looked back in time to see the
door sealing just as the dragons reached the threshold. Seconds later, Matinee
had sealed the door by spray-painting that familiar heart-shaped symbol on the
metal.
“What’s she doing on the Troika?” Katarina demanded. “I thought
that symbol was meant to ward her off?”
“It does,” Matinee said. “She must already have been aboard when we
sealed the airlock.”
“So now we’re trapped on
the ship with her?”
Tatiana could barely believe it.
“Looks that way,” Matinee
said.
“Then what are we going to
do?” Tatiana asked. “This is just going from bad to worse!”
“I’m gonna
do what I’m paid to do,” Matinee said evenly. “I’m gonna get you two to
safety.”
#
Corridor by corridor,
Matinee shepherded the twins through the Troika.
“Do you have to seal every blast-door?” Katarina asked, feeling exasperated as she watched Matinee spray the heart
shaped symbol on yet another door.
“Yup,” Matinee said. “The
more doors I seal, the longer it takes the Witch to chase us. The longer it
takes her to reach us, the more time I have to get you two to safety.”
“Us two?” Tatiana said. “What about Uncle Ivan? And Boyd—”
“I’ll worry about them
later,” Matinee said, “My first priority is you,
okay?”
Katarina’s eyes narrowed.
There was something shifty about Matinee’s reply, about her expression, that
Katarina couldn’t put her finger on. It was the kind of expression she wore
when the two of them shared furtive cigarettes and whisky together. What are you up to, Matinee? she wondered…
#
They pressed on. But it
didn’t matter. It was obvious the Troika
belonged to the Witch.
The lights were failing,
and it was becoming very, very cold—so cold, in fact, that the all-pervading
frost that now hugged every wall and bulkhead was beginning to thicken into
crisp ice. Katarina’s gaze flicked about. What little light there was kept
playing tricks on her. She was sure she could see the dragons gliding across
the ice, or the Witch crouching in the shadows.
Katarina stood and
shivered, hugging herself as she watched Matinee seal another blast-door. She
switched attention to her sister. Tatiana was looking into the middle-distance
as she played with her hair—no doubt fretting about Boyd.
As for Katarina, she too
found her mind wandering, despite the cold and the danger.
The Witch. Katarina couldn’t get over the sight of her. She’s so bold. So confident I bet she’s never
had to skulk about on a spaceship, fleeing for her life. I bet she’s never been
chased out of her home. I bet she’s never been over-shadowed by her damned
sist—
“Damn,” Matinee muttered,
looking away from the blast-door and shielding her face as a shower of sparks
erupted from as its controls. “All this frost must have started to get into the
systems.”
“Is it me, or is the air
getting stale as well?” Tatiana asked
Katarina took a deep
breath. Dammit—she’s right, she realised.
“Great, the life support’s
gone too,” Matinee said. “We’re gonna have to get a move on before we run out
of oxygen.”
“Should we go via the
med-bay? Collect Ivan?” Tatiana pressed again.
“No,” Matinee said, flatly.
“But—”
“No buts, Tatiana,” Matinee
said. “We haven’t time to keep arguing about this.”
“There must be another
option!”
Tatiana continued to
protest, and Katarina wondered just who her sister was the most concerned
about: Ivan or Boyd.
“What about the Witch?”
Tatiana said. “Can’t we just… well, kill her?”
Matinee laughed. “Not
unless you’ve got a house to drop on her, no.”
“A
house?”
“Y’know,
a house? Dorothy? Ruby
slippers? ‘Ding dong the Witch is dead’?”
The twins looked at her
blankly.
“You have no idea what I’m
talking about, do you?”
The twins shook their
heads.
“Jesus,” Matinee muttered
shaking her head, “what do they teach kids these days?”
#
Behind them the last
blast-door slid drunkenly into a half-shut position, then ground to a halt.
“Doesn’t matter anyway,”
Matinee said. “We’re here.”
The Troika’s shuttle bay was every bit as cold and dark as the rest of
the ship. Sitting in the bay were three shuttles, quiet and forlorn. They
reminded Tatiana of apprehensive cats, crouching and listening to the dull
booms of the space-battle as it reverberated through the Troika.
Matinee gestured toward the
nearest—and newest—shuttle. “Right, get aboard,” she ordered.
“But… But
Boyd? Ivan?” Tatiana
protested. This isn’t right. We can’t just leave them. We won’t! “What
are you doing, Matinee?” she went on, clenching her fists. “Tell me you’re not
going to just leave the others, because I won’t allow—”
“Get…aboard!”
“What? No, Matinee!”
Tatiana yelled back, “Why are you being like this? Uncle Ivan…Boyd…they’re your
friends! I…” She paused a moment and looked into Matinee’s eyes. This woman had
been her friend for so long, Tatiana just hoped she
could touch something inside her. “I don’t understand, Matinee, How can you be
so—”
“Because I’m paid to be
‘so’, Princess,” Matinee said, her voice low. “I’m paid to keep you two alive,
okay? Not Ivan. Not Boyd. Not even myself. Just you two, understand? Now,
please, get aboard one of those bloody shuttles whilst we still have the t…”
“Matinee?” Tatiana asked as the punk’s voice tailed off, her gaze
going up and over Tatiana’s head. Tatiana turned around.
The
dragons. The dragons had found them.
Defying the term
“hermetically sealed”, the two tattoos slipped into the bay through the
shuttle-bay doors, grinning and winking.
“Oh, that’s priceless.”
Matinee laughed, humourlessly. “All the time we were sealing the inner doors,
an’ they just went ‘round the outside
of the ship?”
The dragons moved into the
hangar and began to circle their prey. All the while they leered at the three
women, mocking them.
No! Tatiana’s stomach knotted, her eyes stung by tears, that’s
so unfair! We tried so hard! Matinee tried so hard!
And Matinee, it seemed,
would continue to try.
“Run!” she shouted as she
drew two pistols—antique broom-handle Mausers strapped low to her sturdy
thighs—and began to fire at the dragons as they swept toward her and the twins.
Tatiana tried. She turned
and grabbed Katarina, trying to urge her sister into motion. But Katarina,
hypnotised by the unfolding scenario, didn’t move.
The dragons reached
Matinee’s boots and rose swiftly up each leg on her fatigues as if printed on
the fabric. Reaching the waistband in a flash, they vanished under the
bodyguard’s body-armour.
Matinee screamed long, and
she screamed hard.
#
They ran in blind panic. It
was only when Tatiana stopped running that she realised that somehow she and
Katarina had become separated, and her moody sister was nowhere to be seen.
Now even Tatiana was
breathing hard, pressed into the corner of bulkhead. She pressed her hands over
her ears.
Matinee. Her screams were stabbing at her, echoing throughout the Troika. Screams as guttural and Hellish
as her torture must have been protracted and painful.
Tatiana squeezed her eyes
shut, only to open them again, paranoid that the Witch would loom out of the
darkness at her. She looked about her though a blur of tears. I don’t even know where I am. The Troika it… it looks so different.
The main lights were gone
now and the frost that clutched at every surface twinkled red as the alarm
lights blinked. The resulting red sheen on every door, every wall, every panel was shot through with thick white veins of
frost, and to Tatiana it looked like everything was made of meat. Meat in cold storage.
Of the Witch there was no
sign.
Matinee. Matinee was being tortured to death, and Tatiana didn’t
know what to do.
#
Their escape form the
corridor had been frenetic and desperate, but now Katarina was in Matinee’s
quarters, squeezed into a corner of the jumbled room.
Matinee’s quarters.
Katarina liked it in here, just like she liked the bodyguard’s quarters back at
the palace. It was jammed full of old movie posters, clothes, guns, cigs and
booze. She’d spent so many nights with Matinee, drinking and smoking as they
watched some old film or listened to old Earther
music, that she felt safe here, despite it all.
Presently she drew heavily
upon a bottle of the punk’s whisky before—teeth clenched—she resumed cutting
herself with an old hunting knife she’d found in among Matinee’s junk. God, that feels better, she thought as
each stroke of knife brought its own unique type of release. The blood soaked
into her vest top and wound its way down the blade like the smallest of rivers.
It was only a matter of
time until the Witch found her here—and Katarina knew she had to be ready.
But it isn’t that easy, is it? Katarina thought. Sure,
Matinee, or Ivan, or Boyd’d know what to do—but me? I’m just a kid. How am I
supposed to know what to do?
She took another hefty swig
of the whisky.
Okay, she thought, what would Matinee do? Or Boyd? Or Ivan? Run? Shoot the bitch? Bluff?
She looked at the whisky
bottle.
Get blind drunk?
Shoot the bitch, probably. But Ivan doesn’t shoot anyone
anymore. He doesn’t even touch guns.
Okay, so what would Ivan do? Bluff?
But the sight of the Witch—so
glorious in her magic and majesty—lingered in Katarina’s mind, and the young
woman suddenly found herself fantasising just what it must be like to be so
powerful, so confident, that you could just swat somebody as tough as Matinee
like a fly.
She found herself, as she
dropped the knife to the floor and lit a cigarette, wondering what it must be
to be a witch.
#
Having made it back to her
cabin, Tatiana was beside herself, clutching her scented pillow as she sank to
her knees in her quarters. She began to cry.
The screams had shuddered
to a halt. Matinee was dead.
Tatiana had liked Matinee
nearly as much as Katarina did. She was cool, with her guts and her antique
guns. But now she was dead and Tatiana had just left her to die.
“Oh, God!” she moaned into
her hands. “Oh, Matty, I’m so sorry. I was just… I was just so scared…”
She raised her head a
little, stared into the middle-distance. Matinee.
Ivan. Boyd. The Witch. Long Knives.
God. What should I do? God. God help me. Help me to help them!
Please!
Suddenly her vision cleared
as she focused on something on the deck of her quarters. A pencil, thrown onto
the floor by the bucking of the ship and almost lost amidst a sea of
teddy-bears make-up and clothes.
“Jesus.” Matinee’s words sprang to life in Tatiana’s mind. “What do they teach kids these days..?”
“Painting,” Tatiana
muttered, almost delirious, as she brought herself to her feet. “I should have
been painting today.”
She stumbled to the tidy
desk in the corner of her cabin. Reaching it, she sat down and tore the pillow
from its case, casting the pillow aside as she laid its delicate cover on the
desk.
Ivan always liked to have
the Troika ready to take his nieces
on trips, and always insisted the ship’s quarters were ready for the girls to
leave at a moment’s notice. As such, the desk’s drawers—like the wardrobe,
bathroom and linen chest—were fully stocked, stuffed with pencils, drawing
books, tubes of paint and brushes. Now Tatiana was grabbing handfuls of tubes
in a daze, dumping them on them on the desk.
“Painting,” she repeated,
with determination.
#
The drop in temperature had
been the first indication, and now Katarina stared at the door. Sure enough,
the door rapidly became covered in frost—a frost that soon crystallized into
thick ice.
“Katarina?” she heard a
voice inquire. “Katarina Valentine? Are you there?”
A gentle
knocking.
“It’s time to die, Katarina
Valentine.”
Another knock—heavier
now—and the door shattered.
Katarina didn’t cry out,
she didn’t panic. She just watched the Witch enter Matinee’s quarters, pausing
at the threshold of the room.
Okay, Katarina told
herself, it’s time to decide. What are
you going to do? “Wait!” She raised her hand. “Just, wait, okay?”
“Wait?” the Witch asked
with a demure smile. “For what? Do you want time to
beg? To plead? That’s what usually happens.”
“No,” Katarina answered
immediately, her mind racing as she scrambled around for something—anything—to
say. Her train of thought was quickly derailed, however, as she studied the
Witch.
Look at her, she
thought. She’s magnificent. So confident, so secure. She’s not worried about her weight,
about her hair, about which boys fancy her or if her
tits are too small or if she’s going to die a virgin. She’s just… awesome.
“No, I don’t want to beg,”
Katarina finally whispered. “I want to be like you.”
#
Tatiana had stopped
painting the pillow-case, and was now painting her face. Her frenzied,
attacking application of lipstick froze, however, in mid-stroke. She looked up,
swollen, red eyes losing their focus.
Katarina. The Witch had found her Katarina.
It was a pain in her
stomach and a wave of nausea. It always came to her whenever Katarina was in
trouble. Like the time Katarina had fallen off her horse in the woods. Or the
time she’d poisoned herself by drinking too much at
Gemma’s house. Tatiana knew. She always knew.
Instinctively, without
thinking, Tatiana rose to her feet, and headed for the door.
I’m coming, Kat. I’m not leaving you to die the way I left
Matinee.
#
The Witch laughed long, and
she laughed hard. “You? Be like me? And how
would we achieve this? How would we achieve this…glorious transformation? How would we turn the sullen little
Princess into an evil little witch?”
Katarina swallowed,
shaking. Tatiana. Tatiana was coming, Katarina knew it—she could feel it.
Tatiana was coming and she’d know what to do. All Katarina had to do was stall
the Witch long enough.
“Teach me,” Katarina said.
“Teach you? Why would I
want to ‘teach’ you anything? I came here to kill you, not take you under my
wing.”
“Because it’d be the
greatest form of revenge you could get over my Father.”
For the first time,
Katarina thought she detected the slightest stir in the Witch’s composure as
she paused, staring hard at Katarina. Katarina tried to maintain what Matinee
called her ‘poker face’.
It wasn’t all that hard. In
fact, Katarina found herself surprised by how easy it was. It was just like a
stream of consciousness, flowing from her unchecked and burbling. It was so
instantaneous, so easy, that she began to wonder exactly how much of it was a bluff…
“Revenge?” the Witch
finally asked.
“Revenge,” Katarina nodded.
“Think about it. Ask anybody what my father—and Uncle Ivan—loves the most, out
of anything, and they’ll tell you it’s us. Me and Tatiana.
“By you—the one woman my
father has ever been afraid of—taking me under your wing, by making me your
apprentice, by turning me into what he fears and hates the most—you—well,
wouldn’t that be so much better than just killing
me?”
“And what do you get out of
it?” the Witch asked. Her hands were on her broad hips, her head lowered as her
gaze bore into Katarina., who, once again, felt her
own sight wandering the Witch’s generous body.
“Look in a mirror,”
Katarina said, her mouth dry.
The Witch didn’t answer.
She stood and stared at Katarina, obviously ruminating. And as she did, she
idly stroked gloved fingers across the top of one ample, semi-concealed breast.
Katarina stared at the hand, at the fingers, at the breast and she felt
something... something strange, stir inside her. It was that same kind of
breathless and tight-chested strange that she’d felt whenever she was near
Gemma or her brother. That kind of strange that made her want
to reach out and touch...
No. No! Don’t think like that, Katarina
thought. She’s hurt everybody you love.
She wants to hurt you too. Concentrate! But she could feel her courage,
such as it was, withering in the cold.
Finally, Katarina tore her
gaze from the Witch’s chest and looked instead into her eyes. “Please?”
Katarina whispered.
The Witch smiled. It was a
cold smile. “Kill her,” came the answer.
The dragons shot from the
Witch’s body, and across the deck, reaching Katarina’s heavy, untied boots…
… And stopped dead,
recoiling from the young woman, momentarily static in their obvious confusion.
The Witch’s face darkened.
“What?” she demanded, just as perplexed.
Katarina smiled, pulling
her vest-top down just enough to reveal the heart-shaped symbol she’d cut into
her own chest. With other hand she reached behind her, drawing the old pistol—one
from Matinee’s collection—from her waistband and pointing it at the Witch.
“Surprise,” Katarina
sneered, trying to look menacing. The bluff hadn’t worked, so it was time for
“Plan B”: Shoot the bitch.
She fired—a clumsy,
inaccurate shot that jerked her arm back as she yelped in surprise. By more
luck than judgement, the bullet bore down on the Witch’s face, but Katarina
watched with a mixture of fascination and deflation as the bullet—seemingly
robbed of all its energy—slowed to a halt before falling at the Witch’s feet.
In two strides the Witch
reached Katarina, slapping the pistol from her hand before grasping the young
woman by the throat with a grip like steel. “Surprise, indeed. You think that’s
going to save you?” she growled as she squeezed hard. “You think a gun and a
silly little shape cut into your skin is going to keep me from throttling the
life from you?”
Katrina felt her windpipe
closing as the Witch’s fingers bit into her neck. She felt her knees buckle as
she grabbed the Witch’s arms. As their bare skin made contact, Katarina’s
augmented by that arcane symbol, the Witch’s flesh began to burn.
But the woman did not
release her hold. Her face contorted in anger. “Do you think I’ve waited all
this time for my revenge to be stopped by a doodle?!”
she screeched. “I think somebody has over-estimated its power over me!”
Katarina’s mind raced as
she began to choke. She couldn’t just die like this—Father had taught her to be
a fighter. She couldn’t just let this woman squeeze all that out of her. Think! she
demanded of herself. Go for her neck?
No use—it’s covered with a brass collar.
The face! Go for the face! Burn it off! See how pretty she looks with her eyes poked out!
But the Witch’s eyes made
contact with Katarina’s, and Katarina was lost.
“Just die,” was all the woman said, and Katarina suddenly knew. She
understood. The Witch’s power wasn’t just about tattooed dragons and the cold
and shattering metal. It was about mind over matter. Her will against yours—and
right now Katarina’s will was totally enslaved.
Yes, she thought. Just let me die. I don’t need to fight you.
Take me…
“Just die, Katarina
Valentine,” the Witch whispered again, and Katarina’s body went limp as her
vision dimmed before the cruel beauty of this woman. Soon she could see nothing
but the Witch’s cold visage, and she felt glad. To die looking into the ice
behind those eyes, to be ushered into whatever damnation the Witch had waiting
for her, was heavenly.
Everything went black.
Black…and
just a hint of blue?
Is that… Movement…? Is that…Tatiana?
Emerging from behind her,
Tatiana threw something over the Witch’s head—and the woman screamed every bit
as long as hard as Matinee had done.
Katarina fell back and onto
the bed, coughing, as the Witch let her go, and the Princess looked on to see
Tatiana, teeth bared as she drew the pillow-case tight about the Witch’s head,
snarling as she forced the bitch to her knees. Smoke curled from beneath the
material, and Katarina saw it had been painted with the heart-shaped symbol.
The Witch was clawing at it as her dragons snapped and danced about Tatiana’s
feet—but to no avail, the same symbol was scrawled
across her face in bright red lipstick.
“You!” Katarina heard Tatiana hiss, “you come here—you and your
Long Knife friends—and you take all this from us? From me? You take my friends? You take my home? You take my parents?”
There was no answer, only
more screams and an increasingly weak struggle to get free.
“Kill her!” Katarina heard
herself shout—scream, even—the Witch’s hypnotic hold over her broken. “Kill her
now, Tatiana! Do it! Do it now!”
Katarina went on, her relief spewing out of her in a torrent of malice and
desire for retribution.
Tatiana looked up. Tatiana
looked up and into Katarina’s eyes…
… And Katarina knew. She saw
it wasn’t there. That hard dullness in Boyd’s eyes, in Matinee’s, in Vast’s: it
just wasn’t there. For all Tatiana’s anger, Katarina could see she didn’t have
it in her to kill the Witch. She was too afraid, and it was written all over
her face in streaked mascara and smudged lip-stick. No matter what the Witch
had done, no matter who she’d killed, Tatiana just didn’t have the backbone to
pay her back in kind. She was too weak.
Katarina felt sick.
“You,” Katarina heard
Tatiana breath into the Witch’s ear, making a visible effort to gather herself. “You can go. You can go, and you can tell your
friends that we’re Valentines, and we don’t die. Ever.
And if any more of your friends come looking for us, looking for trouble,
they’ll need more than a few magic spells and parlour tricks to get out alive.
Do you understand?”
There was no answer as
Tatiana let go. The Witch, now limp and motionless, fell heavily to the deck,
her breath as shallow and directionless as the smoke that curled from her
covered head. Of her dragons there was no sign.
“Do you?!” Tatiana
bellowed.
There was still no answer.
Tatiana looked at Katarina again, but not for long. She looked away, her
shoulders sagging slightly, shame and confusion scrawled across her face every
bit as clearly as the lipstick symbol.
Katarina turned away, only
to hear Tatiana dragging the Witch from the room.
#
“Tatiana,” Boyd had said,
“I need you to get back to the flight-deck and be ready, okay? When I give the
signal we’re gonna need to get outta this holding bay quickly, understand?”
Tatiana sat and waited, at
the Troika’s controls. Gripping the
idle yoke, she stared beyond the canopy at the holding bay beyond. She waited
for Boyd and tried to ignore all she’d seen, all she’d heard and all she’d
done.
Matinee’s
death. Katarina’s bargaining with the
Witch. Her own inability to finish the Witch off.
She closed here yes,
squeezing them tight, trying to block it all out.
Am I that weak? Is Katarina that… dark?
“Tatiana!” the voice—Boyd’s
voice—finally bellowed over the Troika’s
‘net, rescuing Tatiana from her inner turmoil. “We’re back. Go! Go! Go!”
Seconds later—the
flagship’s magnetic clamps disabled by Boyd’s party—the Troika blasted out of the holding bay and scythed through the
battle as the dwindling Oridian fleet fought the Long Knives to the bitter end.
#
The Long Knives’ flagship
still squatted in the thick of the waning battle, the Oridian resistance now
dying away. In stark contrast to the motion and fury outside, the flagship’s bridge
was hushed and almost serene. Orders were issued and executed without fuss or
panic, and the humanoid crew—dressed to a man in their black naval uniforms and
black, ornate masks enriched with red legends—were the image of calm and
confidence.
At the centre of this quiet
machine sat the Blind Admiral. Thinner even than the rest of
his slender, graceful crew, his uniform and mask were devoid of medals or
decoration. Hands placed placidly on his knees, aged head bowed, he was
listening intently to the hush of his ship and its laconic crew.
The Troika, it appeared, had escaped—and the Valentines along with it.
“Admiral,” one of his
lieutenants murmured, bending to whisper in his ear, “Oridia has fallen, and
the capital is ours. Vice Chancellor Mass orders you to report to him there
immediately. In person.”
The Blind Admiral
hesitated. He wanted to pursue the Troika.
He wanted to make sure the royal line was extinguished with the deaths of
Tatiana and Katarina. He wanted to know Ivan was finally dead.
Orders were, however,
orders. Especially when issued by
“Bring us about, and place
us in stationary orbit over the capital,” the Blind Admiral ordered as he
stood, his words ringing with that confidence and authority that only military
conquest brings.
He turned to leave the
bridge, the tapping of his cane piercing the bridge’s bubble and noise.
Reaching the exit, he paused to listen for another moment.
The Troika had reached the periphery of the battle now, and had engaged
its graviton drives, vanishing into space—but not before jettisoning an
escape-pod bearing shallow life signs. An Oridian. The
Witch, no doubt—kept alive and returned to the Blind Admiral as a warning.
How very Ivan Valentine,
the Blind Admiral thought with a smile. Well,
Ivan, if I can’t chase you, I know
others who can. “Captain,” he snapped just before leaving the bridge, “have a frigate recover that escape-pod and stabilise the
Witch. Then bring her son to me. And Sachskurve.
“They have work to do.”
The Valentine Chronicles will continue with After
the Ordeal
© 2007 Mathew David
Spaull. All rights reserved.