The Traitor King (Skull-Peeling Science Fiction!) READ IT!

[Note from the Author: Number 15 out the 52 stories you're expecting by Thanksgiving. The idea came in meditation, when I opened my eyes in the midst of a group exercise and saw a shadow on the wall. By all appearances, it seemed there was a man knelt on his knees. Behind this shadow prisoner was another, much larger figure with a rifle. The image haunted me, burnt into my mind. It was so real, so accurate, and so perfect for a story. The prisoner had an oblong head, like that of a space suit; and somehow ... someway ... this came from that flash occurrence. Perhaps I am the first man to write a story in honor of a shadow on the wall.]

Sergeant Kleen Maldivian watched the feared Kelzaar head-drinkers march in threes down the gangplank, each face wrapped in the gray-crimson fur of the mighty Snow Rolf, so that only their black eyes were visible. 

The Kelzaar had been a last resort; evil things, concerned only with the pride of victory. It was rumored that many died with enough bounty to buy a planet for themselves, that what little they spent was on weapons and tracking devices, wares to polish their already formidable reputation as the fiercest bounty hunters in all the cosmos.

Their Chieftain donned armor of plated Klant bone, greaves of fused ribs, gauntlets of hollowed vertebrae, and a curved yellow sword honed from the jaw bone of a Shabeek. He was older than the others, white of hair and fiercer in his step. He halted, pulled his scarf to reveal a face missing its upper lip, and leered at the wall of Tribunal soldiers crowding the fortress gates.

“I have brought your rat.”

Maldivian stepped forward, his forehead sheened with sweat. His home planet was far cooler than this desert. “The Magistrate’s terms were clear. Carmak must be alive.”

“He breathes,” the Kelzaar hissed. “Whether or not he continues to will depend on your flexibility.”

Maldivian shifted. "I am known to be limber if the trade is fair."

"A Cantrix fuse for your traitor." 

Maldivian paled. “We have gold and fuel cells, as you were promised.” He fumbled in his battle robes, sensing his soldiers’ unease, the men touching their compression rifles and grinding their teeth.

The Kelzaar vanguard stood absolutely still behind their leader, Tribuna's three suns playing off their armor.

Finally Maldivian found what he was looking for. He unfolded the signed contract and approached them, pointing at the red slash at the bottom of the page. “It’s all here. That’s your signature.”

The Kelzaar tilted his head, his scars glinting in the sunlight. “Ah, yes. This arrangement of paper and ink.” He ripped it from the Sergeant’s hands, unbuttoned his breaches, and maneuvered it down his backside, smiling all the while. The sound of pages crumpling rose briefly above his laughter. Then he threw the stained parchment at Maldivian’s feet. “One Cantrix fuse. Or Harton Carmak flies away from this desert grave.”

The Sergeant’s face was pulsing. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “You’d never outrun us.”

The Chieftain’s Shabeek sword was out and poised against Maldivian’s throat before the Sergeant could blink.

“So I’ll kill you first.” His smile looked strange with no upper lip to frame it, “Give my men a head start.”

Maldivian sidled his eyes, motioning for his men to lower their weapons. “Carmak is the reason we’ve been forced to reconcile with these beasts. Let us be done with it. Blood has been shed enough! Lower those weapons. NOW!”

The soldiers obeyed ... mumbling amongst themselves.

“A sensible leader.” The Kelzaar sheathed his blade, eyeing the soldiers. “Holster those metal cocks before you poke an eye out. No honor in a weapon you cannot feel entering the body of your enemy. The problem with your ilk is that the feeling has left your hands. You push buttons behind walls and call yourselves heroes. The rebel Carmak has many points that fascinate me.” He flitted his bronze eyes back to Maldivian. “Were it not for his poverty, it might be your head I used to slake my thirst. Now … load the fuel cells and the gold. And bring me my fuse.”

“Or?” Maldivian whispered the threat, though all could see he didn’t mean it.

The Chieftain bent closer, sliding a knife from his gauntlet. “Or I turn you lot into a herd of geldings.”

*****

Maldivian watched the Starhorse elevate from the steel landing pad, kicking fans of red sand as it turned. The five-wings retracted and it punched upward through the atmosphere on a trail of neon blue. “Pigs for the highest bidder.” he whispered to his men. “Sellswords. No loyalty. No honor.”

“Enough honor to trade,” his assistant said happily beside him, “Harton Carmak is finally yours.”

“At the price of a Cantrix fuse.”

“And what can those barbarians do with a Cantrix fuse? That Starhorse is two hundred years old. Meta-Fission is at its barest beginnings. An onion with more layers than we could hope to peel.”

“It’s not them I’m worried about.” Maldivian turned to go inside, pushing through the soldiers into a long black hall, his cape a flowing silver river behind him. Polished doors hissed open at their approach. “The Kelzaar head-drinkers are traders, you imp! A Cantrix fuse fetches a high price beyond the Hydra solar system. Twice that in Andromeda.”

“You’re overreacting. I don’t see the—”

Maldivian spun, cape swirling, and gripped his assistant’s neck. “And what of the Rabble-Rousers! Imagine if they laid hold of a fuse. What that would mean for our Planetary Union. The mineral exports. The cordoned warlords encamped in our pits.” He gripped tighter, until the fat boy’s face began to purple. “The supply chains could be smashed! The interstellar broadcast waves scrambled and repurposed! Imagine Carmak’s face greeting the free worlds instead of our Magistrate! Do you see, yet, you coddled, soft-minded, fool!”

Maldivian dropped him.

The boy gasped on the floor, his eyes ringed with tears. His master had never berated him, let alone assaulted him. He was confused. “I’m sorry.” The assistant picked himself onto his knees. “Please wait.”

But Maldivian was already stalking away, the door sliding closed behind him.

*****

Harton Carmak gasped awake, naked and chained in his cell. Poison evacuated from every orifice, dripping onto the mirrored chrome floor. He coughed for several minutes, keeping his mouth open to stop his tongue from swelling. When the fit passed he knelt on his knees next to the latrine and smelled the egested liquid.

It was white like Shabeek venom, though his nose caught a hint of Moon Spider silk. A mixture of the two, he finally decided. Shabeek venom sped the heart on toward infarction, while the silk ink of the dreaded spider coaxed one toward paralysis. Together, the two had immobilized him without killing him.

“Kelzaar poisons,” he whispered. “Clever.”

The Bounty Hunters were feared by all except perhaps Harton Carmak, who understood their weaknesses, and could therefore exploit them. They were pirates, after all, and pirates had rules, if only among themselves.

Harton Carmak had no rules.

His shackles weren’t coded, thank the Gods. He felt along the links for tamper-charges, making his movements casual, swaying slightly and still pretending to be sick. He saw the view-crystals high in each corner of his cell, understood that they were watching him.

Carmak gripped his stomach and, groaning, turned to the latrine and dipped his head below the soiled rim, making a show of flexing his back for his audience. He reached into the back of his mouth, found the molar he’d had implanted in the Cyrus System, and began to unscrew it. He felt the seal pop, then the automated de-threader spun itself open, pushing three alloy splints up from his hollowed gumline. He was still spitting when the door slid open behind him.

Carmak slid the alloy splints into his palm skin, dipping his hands in the muddy water and flushing.

“I’ve waited long to see your face,” a cold voice said behind him.

Carmak smiled. “And now you see my ass instead. How disappointing.” He got up slowly, his back to them, counting the footsteps in the hall. Six men. Not impossible.

“Turn around, Carmak. Face the man that chased you halfway across the universe … and won.”

“Paying for others to chase does not give you the liberty to call yourself a participant, Sergeant.” Carmak sensed the man stiffening. “That is you, isn’t it? Kleen Maldivian. The machine’s favorite cog. Already you are legend across the stars. Do you know what they call you?” Carmak waited before laughing. “The Magistrate’s bitch.”

Maldivian buckled in a sudden rage. “I’ll have you’re tongue before your buried, traitor! Do you hear me? Better yet, I’ll toss your carcass to the sand raptors. But not the tongue—”

Carmak heard the Sergeant closing in and dropped to one knee, moaning: “Damn these Kelzaar poisons...”

“—Your tongue I’ll have dipped in amalgam and fused to my latrine, so that every morning when I drop my robes you’ll be there to taste my—”

Carmak drove an elbow up into Maldivian’s testicles. He looped his chain over the Sergeant’s neck and flipped him down over his shoulder, pinning his solar plexus beneath one knee. Maldivian gaped up at him, coughing and trying to twist away. In one swift movement Carmak swiped his hand through the poison on the ground and shoved his fingers in the Sergeant’s mouth, gripping the latrine as the soldiers rushed in, clubbing him and shocking him and trying in vain to pull their leader from beneath his knee.

A pale giant with chromium eyes appeared from the hall. He ducked under the doorway, batted the soldiers away with one hand, and cursed in a language no one spoke. He crossed the cell in one step and wrenched back Carmak’s hair, breaking his grip on the latrine.

Carmak tried to throw an elbow, but the giant caught it easily, twisting him around and lifting a swift upper knee into his jaw. Carmak’s eyes rolled back, his body fighting to stay upright.

Then the known leader of The Liberation fell like a sack of meat onto the floor.

 *****                 

Luscius wept by Maldivian’s bedside.

The poison had been identified, and its antidote synthesized, but the Sergeant was old, and he twitched uneasily in his coma. In the last three hours he’d stirred but once, clutching his assistant’s hand and whispering, “The Starhorse. Get the Fuse. We must retract it. Send everyone. My seal, my seal…”

He’d reached for the stylus on the table near his airbed, scribbling a signature, his eyes haunted and dashing everywhere, as if his enemies lined the polished walls, grinning and sharpening their knives.

Luscius had snapped his face up, tense with fear. But the room had been empty. When he’d looked back, Maldivian had scrawled two words in his temporary madness.

Hand Carmak…

Luscius had followed orders, informing the General Magistrate of the blighted exchange and their loss of the Cantrix fuse. Half the fleet had been sent after the Kelzaar Starhorse, but had yet been unable to locate them.

Now, red-eyed and shivering, his fat lips pursed, Luscius gripped his master’s hand. “They will find them, my sweet. I know you did not mean to harm me so. I know you love me.”

And, being sure no one was there to see, he bent to kiss his lover’s cheek.

*****

Carmak swam into consciousness as a fish ripped from water. He was being dragged through a long hallway. Though the polished steel burnt his skin, he stayed limp, slitting one eye open to count the numbers of his escort. Twelve men, most of them walking confidently, unaware of the threat now conscious on the floor.

The better for him. 

He rolled his eye ahead and saw a thirteenth figure leading them. He was tall and pale as kine milk, broad of shoulder and deep of chest, in a silverine plate of flexible armor that covered all but his arms and head. His hair was pale yellow, shaved up one side and braided in a netted tail that ended in a razor combat hook.

Not a solider, but a mercenary.

Carmak studied the man’s tattoos and saw quickly that he was a Kelsian, from a planet that’s sun rose only once every seven days. He’d campaigned on the cruel rock long ago, marooned by the same Magisterial Fleet he would one day betray. He could still remember the civil wars that had painted that landscape in fire. New kings and Generals sprouting every day, taking by force what the peasant’s wouldn’t surrender. He had killed many, and saved many in turn. He wondered if this Kelsian shared their bloodline. If, in the darkness of the past, one of his stubborn kindred had crumbled beneath the blasts of Carmak’s ranks.

Carmak clapped shut his eye when the Kelsian turned, letting the floor burn against him.

The escort stopped at a command post, and he felt himself being lifted. He was careful to keep his fingers securely folded over the splints in his palm, jerking every so often to simulate the lasting effects of electrocution. He felt a cold table against his back. Then the hydraulic U-clamps latched his neck and wrists and ankles with a clink.

“Bring him in to the Dais,” the Kelsian said, his voice impossibly deep. “And bring the mop-bots. I expect he’ll bleed.”

Though he tried to stay the sensation, he felt his heart begin to sink. Until that very moment, Harton Carmak had never considered himself capable of death.

***** 

The Kelzaar Chieftain sat in his wheelhouse, chewing glak weed and spitting on the deck. His crew stood still behind him, their arms looped in the rope-holds lining the hollow brig. But for the pale controls, the Starhorse was in darkness.

The Chieftain pressed a sequence of commands; punched the control dash when it wheezed; sighed at the holographic feed as it shivered in the air and finally firmed. The approaching asteroid ring circled like a troupe of slow-moving beetles. The desert planet Tribuna stretched below, scarred by dark red canyons.

He looked at the stern image feed, where two of the planet’s three suns circled at opposite arcs. “We wait for the eclipse, unless we’re spotted,” he told them. “And here they come, the bastards.”

A fleet of thirty ships broke Tribuna’s atmosphere, separating to clear the planet’s rings.

All who saw his Starhorse laughed at it, calling her scrap fodder, or space coffin, or ancient bucket of bolts … but what his ship lacked in regality, she more than compensated for in dynamic movement. Furthermore, her com-transmitters were considered antiquated, and thus remained unlisted in the Tribunal tracing systems. She ran on atomic propulsion, where as most ships operated on manufactured Flak-cells, all of which were embedded with tracking signatures. In short, they were off the grid. A silent knife gliding through the vacuum of space.

The Chieftain levered the control shafts. He held his breath, maneuvering behind a crag of space rock. The wing ports shot bursts of stabilizing air. He heard the hull groan, the clatter of old bolts, the steel bending between the ring’s magnetic field. 

“Harnesses!”

The Kelzaar men secured ropes around their waists.

“Freefloaters beware!”

He pulled the thruster and killed the engines at the same time, the gravity evaporating, his chewed braids of hair lifting before his eyes. He held his breath, waited for a collision, and shouted with pride as the ship made its target. Matching the speed and trajectory of the asteroid, they were momentarily invisible, tumbling through the planet’s rings.

This time when he spit, the glak weed took to the air in dark brown globes. He watched it smash into the ceiling and break apart, thinking of Tribuna and the great black fortress that ruled it.

He opened his view shields, gazing at the sun. “Steady now, boys. Death rewards patience.”

*****           

The hand that slapped Carmak sent white comets sailing across his vision. He snapped his eyes open and saw the Kelsian giant smiling. His teeth were implanted with amalgamine, an alloy capable of chewing through anything but diamonds.

“The U-clamps are a bit much, don’t you think?” Carmak looked down at the torture table securing him vertically in the center of the room. “That must have been your knee I felt. I must admit I was surprised. Soft for a Kelsian.”

The giant swung his half-shaved head, whipping his pale braid like a rope-scythe. He caught the razor hook fastened to its end and pressed it below Carmak’s chin. “What do you know of Kelsa, traitor?”

“Much. I fought the Pirate Witch and his forces. Helped liberate Hyuntha and Macleed. I’ve felt its wrath and survived. You are a proud, noble race. A pity to see you leashed here like a common mongrel.”

The Kelsian laughed, dropping his braid. “You are a liar.”

Carmak smiled deference, looking around the giant’s broad shoulders and memorizing the lay of the room in one synaptic flash. He saw intercoms on the left side of the port-doors, evacuation chambers on the right. The Tribunal’s steel judgment dais towered at the front of the chamber, four meters above the ground. The rest of the escort lined the walls, waiting and looking nervous.

“You all have a chance,” Carmak told them. “It is I who stand imprisoned, and yet my heart is freer than any man or Kelsian I see here. I love and fight for a dream that your leaders have ripped from the chest of every race under their mantle. That includes you. Certainly you have positions, security—I once had those things. They gave me peace. To know that others would labor to amend problems before they reached me … providing comforts … destroying threats.

“But I tell you it is a lie! The Magistrate and his vipers have made silent work of dismantling our universe. Of the 70 free planets, Tribunal-appointed officials govern 58. Even now they climb the unconquered ranks, closing on their targets. The Unions? All Tribunal. The Flak-cells that power every ship from here to Carcossa? Tribunal. The Interstellar Broadcast Waves and media filters? Can you guess?”

The faces in the escort were silent, though some were now watching, the Kelsian among them. 

“We are being force-fed a peace that does not exist. Entire planets have been eradicated. Who among you has heard of Zandor?”

No one stirred.

“A river planet on the cusp of the Trifold Complex. Most valued for its solid core of Hydrothine. Distilled, Hydrothine produces a nacreous liquid that can be crystallized and enriched. The process is dangerous, but one with no shortage of money or machinery can make easy work of it. Hydrothine crystals are so powerful that two mili-irks is enough to keep this palace powered for the next three cycles.”

The Kelsian waved a massive, tattooed hand. “My father was a chemist and I’ve never heard of Hydrothine.”

Carmak met the giant’s chromium eyes. “That, my friend, is because you know it by its common name. The Cantrix Fuse.”

*****

A series of clicks and conveyors hummed to life above the dais. The soldiers stiffened along the walls, looking guilty. That was good. Carmak saw the upper doors about to open, and whispered quickly:

“Zandorians were eradicated after the discovery. The Magistrate himself gave the order, so that no civil wars might delay the harvesting of its core. Twelve-billion peaceful villagers on a world without need of war were annihilated with a plasma-charge that turned the riverlands to steam. Their history, their art, their myths—All dust! It’s not the first of these biological revisions. Ask yourselves: Is the murder of innocent life and the profligacy of power worth your quiet rest? The master cannot tend his fields without the slave. It is a choice to serve a monster!”

The voice that called above them quavered with age. “We have had quite enough of your litany, General Carmak.”

Carmak met eyes with the Magistrate, standing in his collared cape of gold. “I hold no titles. I am autonomous. As are we all. The hearts of free men cannot suffer the weight of chains. Even now your power decays. I am only the first of many that will gnaw the ankle of this grotesque giant you’ve built.”

The Magistrate turned to the soldiers. “General Carmak disavowed his post and title nine years ago. Since then he has made it his highest ambition to destroy the peace we’ve created. He is a propagandist and compulsive liar. What he told you about Zandor—”

“Is true!”

“—is a fairytale used to recruit soft-minded malcontents from their posts across the universe. Now, you gentleman don’t seem soft-minded to me.”

“No sir,” one soldier said, followed by others, all of them nodding agreement. 

The Kelsian stayed silent, eyeing them carefully.

“Now,” The Magistrate turned back. “Regarding your punishment. Bailiff, will you please state the crimes for which General Carmak is being detained.”

A pot-bellied man in tactical robes and silver gauntlets rose from his seat on the judgment dais. “For the traitor Harton Carmak the following crimes have been alleged…”  

Carmak used the time to pry the splints from his flesh. The list was long, and he made use of it. By the time the bailiff had reached the sixth year of his exploits, Carmak had all three splints free. It was careful work keeping the small sounds of steel on steel from reaching them. But he consoled himself with the though that, if caught, he could link the metals and let the bonding molecules do off with him, the council, the brooding Kelsian, and half of the Tribunal’s fortress all in the same implosion.

He’d seen the Antomic fusion at work on Razgul, the way it chewed through time and space, displacing molecules in a strand, spitting them out in random points across the universe, and leaving only shredded pits of matter behind. The main splint was Thought-Metal, embedded with electro-chemical disable sensors that could corrupt any computer, be it human or machine. That it had not activated while in his own flesh was a miracle. He wasn’t positive what comprised the other two splints, only that they were more pliable, and when both twisted around the Thought-Metal, produced a massive blast radius that took with it all tangible matter.

Carmak poised the splints against the U-clamp of his wrist, sliding it along the groove and searching for a section where the wires crossed.

“And lastly,” the Baliff said, “The destruction of a Flak distribution plant on the cusp of the Trifold Complex.”

He saw the Kelsian’s eyes dart up.

“All of which,” the Baliff continued, “Are punishable by exile in the Raptor Fields. Your crimes are to be judged by his merciful and sapient Lord Magistrate. Do you contest?”

“Lord now?” Carmak bellowed, ignoring the question. “When I kill you, should I expect your resurrection?”

The Magistrate offered a cold smile.

“Make no mistake. You will die, Harton Carmak. And it will be neither merciful nor swift. We will explore pain together, you and I. Open up the tender pieces and see if indeed the heart of a Lion beats within that chest. I will know, General…” The Magistrate stared at the twin suns approaching eclipse beyond the high port holes. “For I will hold it in my hands.”

*****   

Sergeant Maldivian gasped awake, tearing at his sheets. He was covered in sweat, his heart thumping like a war drum. Fuscius knelt before him, his round face drawn in concern.

“Master.”

Maldivian fought the urge to reprimand the boy. Sitting by his side in plain sight, fawning over his every twitch, he had no doubt. Their tryst was punishable by death. That the Magistrate himself had no shortage of love objects was of no consequence. If discovered, they would both be exiled, a fate the same as death in this hellish desert.

Ah, but the way the desert light hit Fuscius’ eyes softened Maldivian’s heart. He reached out to caress the boy. “How long have I been like this?”

“Hours.”

“Carmak?”

“Being tried.”

Maldivian stiffened. “He isn’t dead?”

“He’ll be dead soon enough. The Magistrate means to torture the rebel himself.”

“And what of the Kelzaar?”

Fuscius eased his master back down into bed. “They are being sniffed out.”

“They’ve not been captured?”

“Not yet.”

“They’re in a Starhorse!” He pushed Fuscius’ hand away and swung his feet over the airbed. “There’s something wrong. The Cantrix Fuse. The Kelzaar. They hate us. They don’t need gold or flak cells. I was too excited by the prospect of capture to see it! His palm. Did you send my note. Did you have them check Carmak’s hand?”

“The note made no sense. You were delusional.”

Maldivian clenched his fists in frustration. He could feel his tongue starting to swell, a side effect of the poison. “He had something in his hand, dammit! When he grabbed me I saw it. A weapon. Some device. Now the Magistrate means to torture him. They must be warned!”

Fuscius caught his master before he could fall. “He’s been clamped to the torture table. The same Kelsian that put him down after he savaged you stands guard now. Along with twelve others. Rest, Kleen. You need rest.”

And then the light shifted. Both men turned to the port windows. Blue and green wisps snaked across the velvet sky, casting the red dunes in shadow.

Fuscius smiled, though his face betrayed a doom yet unforeseen. “The eclipse has begun.”

*****

A red-green corona bloomed as the two stars passed. Kaleidoscope patterns spread across the brig, framing the warlust in every Kelzaar’s eyes.

The Chieftain started the engines and punched the thrusters, dropping out of Tribuna’s rings in a banking dive. He activated the magnetic condensers. A chorus of settling boots slammed along the steel.

“To your stations!”

They scrambled to the armory, and when the he saw the swords and spears they were pulling from their alcoves, he threw his knife into a post. They halted before the sputtering blade, looked back.

“Swords and spears won’t kill a dragon!”

“But you told their soldiers that guns were…” a grizzled veteran began, before seeing the look in his Chieftain’s eyes. Slowly, he nodded. “It was a farce.”

“They think us barbarians.” The Chieftain smiled. “So we delivered on their expectations. What they will not expect is a Pulse Ray.”

“But it’s only garbage,” another said, sliding the old crate that had been pilfered from the Distribution Plant on the edge of the Trifold Complex. He pulled its lid to reveal an apparatus not unlike an ancient turret gun. “Without a power source it’s useless.”

The Starhorse broke the atmosphere, riding below the clouds. The Chieftain fastened his Rolf fur scarf above his missing lip, scanning beyond the chasms and jutting anticlines, where the lone black fortress waited.

“Ah, but you forget, boy. We have a power source.” 

*****

The Magistrate descended the vast side staircase, his cape forming to every step in a river of liquid gold. Outside the port windows the sunlight shifted, gilding the sharp nose, the sunken chin, the upper teeth protruding ratlike against his bottom lip. “Leave us!”  

The Kelisian watched the soldiers spring for the doors, but did not move.  

The Magistrate curled his upper lip in distaste. “What is it, Melekai?”

“I believe this a trick, Lord. I beg that you allow my presence. It would be my great honor to see his death.”

“Your honor?” The Magistrate raised his eyebrows, looking back at the other council members in their high seats, as if such a thing were a child’s myth. “I’ve given my order, Kelsian. Orders are meant to be obeyed.”

“But Lord, I—”

“Was just leaving,” The Magistrate finished. “I pay for your subordination. Not your advice.”

The Kelsian moved, his steps nowhere near heavy as his shame. He glanced at the prisoner on his way out.

Carmak nodded, as if in slow recognition. “Your father, the chemist … what was his name?”

“Do not answer!” The Magistrate thundered, racing down the steps. “He is an apostate! A traitor!”

The Kelsian flicked his eyes to Magistrate, then to Carmak, the chrome glowing green as it crossed the line of the eclipse.

“I knew a chemist,” Carmak said quickly, “though he claimed his son had died. In a small village east of Macleed. I saved his family. All but one. The girl. Jenza. She’d lost too much blood. Tell me, is Melekai a common name?”

The Magistrate stumbled on the bottom step, crashing to his knees. “Speak a word and it will be your last! I swear it, Kelsian! Guards! Guards!”

But they had already gone.

“I met many on your planet,” Carmak went on. “And yet only one shared your name.”

The Kelsian stared. “What trick is this? How do you know my sister’s name?”

Carmak smiled. “You have your father’s same look of mistrust.”

And then things happened quickly.

*****  

The entire structure shook, throwing the council from their seats. Pieces fell from the ceiling. Port windows shattered in sprays of silicon. Red hazard lights dropped and began to spin, lighting the descent of the bailiff, who cartwheeled all four meters before slamming to the floor.

Carmak didn’t wait for the Magistrate to pick himself up. He traced the splint of thought-metal against the table until he felt the click of relays shutter through the frame.

The U-locks snapped open, and then he was moving, still naked, the Kelsian staring at him with knees bent and a hand on his compression rifle. “You don’t need to kill,” Carmak yelled, “And you don’t need to die! Just stay out of the way!”

Carmak kicked the Bailiff in his face and snatched a plain steel cylinder from his belt. A green flash smashed a hole the size of three men into the judgment dais. Carmak was thrown back. He used his momentum to roll, looked up to see the Magistrate with his own rifle drawn, down on one knee, tracking his movement.

Carmak bounded into a sprint, diving behind the torture table. Another blast tore it from the floor and sent it flipping into the judgment dais. The frame buckled with a great crack. Council members that had gained the staircase slipped and collided, falling as the structure slammed to the ground.

The Magistrate ran for cover. “Guards! The Kelsian has betrayed us! Carmak has escaped! I’m surrounded! I’m—”

A blast of rubble buried the Magistrate before Carmak could reach him. He looked back, saw the Kelsian holding his compression rifle. Steam uncurled from its end. Then the thick barrel swiveled toward his chest.

The giant’s chrome eyes studied him. “What is this? What was that explosion? Who are you really?”

“I am Harton Carmak of the Liberation. That explosion was a Pulse Ray delivered by the Kelzaar.” He bent down, tore the cape of an unconscious council member, and wrapped himself in a toga.

“The Kelzaar? Are you mad?”

“Some say I am. Are the Kelzaar less threatened by the tentacles of this monster?” He motioned to the room. “Now, Kelsian, I have a question for you. Why did you shoot him?”

“I didn’t. I buried him. He has several minutes yet.”

“But why?”

“I hesitated when I should have killed you. It seems your treason is infectious. He suspected me already, only the Gods know why. Now he’s broadcast my name across the channels. Even if I’d shot you—” The fortress shook again. “—he would have had me hung from the red parapet as a warning. I enjoy living too much to bank on luck.”

Carmak laughed, moving for the rubble pile with the Bailiff’s steel cylinder in his hands. He gripped the slab of obsidian and pulled. Veins stood out on his neck and arms, a grunt rising from his throat. “We could use a man like you.”

The Kelsian pulled him back, gripped the slab with one arm, and heaved it over on its side. He dusted his hands, staring hard at Carmak. “I’m no man.”

Carmak looked down at the excavated hole. “I suppose not.”

The Magistrate, bloodied and whimpering, looked up at them. “Please. We can renegotiate. Perhaps I was harsh. A temper unchecked is a dangerous habit. I—”

Carmak broke his nose with the cylinder, then pressed the button on its side. A blue flood of light shot in webs from the cylinder’s end, encircling the old man and lifting him in a net that sent 300 megavolts through his flesh with every movement.

“What are those?” The Kelsian said, noticing the Antomic splints.

Carmak snapped them in half to weaken the charge, then carefully wrapped the two pliable pieces around the Thought-Metal. “This is our way out. Now stand back.” Carmak looked at the sky. The twin stars were separating, their greenish light turning red across the dunes. “Did your father teach you of Antomic fusion?”

Evidentally so, for the Kelsian jogged to the farthest wall and crouched behind a shelf of debris that barely covered his back. Carmak followed at a stroll, dragging the howling Magistrate behind him. He knelt by the Kelsian, tore a piece of twine from the giant’s braid, and used it to tie to the splints to a piece of rubble.

“I’ve never broken them in half,” Carmak admitted.

Then he hurled it at the far wall, dropping to the ground. There was a massive displacement of air. The room shook, then shifted. A wind of ozone stirred the rubble. 

When it was over the Kelsian gasped. “Incredible.”

Half of the massive room, including the fallen dais and council members, was gone. Carmak rose just as the Starhorse lowered into the opening. The Kelzaar Chieftain stood in the open hatch, one arm clutching the gang-nets.

Carmak cupped his mouth. “How fares your army?”

“No losses. The Pulse Ray made easy work of it. They’re sweeping what’s left of the fortress.”

“We’re not here to butcher them.”

“Such a shame to waste Tribunal skulls. But rest assured. They know your rules.”

Carmak moved closer. What had been a floor was now a cliff side, stretching down a hundred meters to the sand. He peered over the edge, then dragged the Magistrate from behind the debris, the old man writhing in the web.  

 “Quite a catch you’ve got there,” The Chieftain called. “And a Kelsian to boot.”

Melekai bristled, stepping back.

Carmak patted the shoulder a full foot above his own head. “They are no enemy of yours. They fight with me. And I am in your debt. Will you not come with us?”

Melekai didn’t move. He stared into the sunlight, now sinking toward the horizon. “What’s your plan?”

“To make this worm talk.” He kicked the magistrate. “And make sure it’s recorded. The Cantrix Fuse has many uses. We have a feed-chain into the broadcast waves, and now the means to power it. The worlds will know the nature of their curse. And then they will decide.”

“Someone will just replace him,” the Kelsian said. “It’s what happened on Kelsa. For every evil king wait ten servants twice as vile. Tribuna’s throne will be stained with blood.”

“Unless, of course, the new king is honorable.”

Melekai couldn’t help but laugh. “And where could one hope to find such a rarity?”

Carmak smiled up at him. “Perhaps he’s standing right next to you.”

(Thank you for reading! Comments are appreciated! Find Novelist Carson Standifer on Facebook!)