Authors: Aya Morningstar
O
ur wedding reception
is the wildest party of Venus. Many of the elite of Sankt Petersburg are there, dressed to the nines in smart fabric and radiant dresses. And then there’s all our tribal friends, dressed in…nothing.
I told Aegus he could wear his biosuit as a compromise between naked and stuffy, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted on wearing a full tux, which—I must admit—looks hot as shit on him.
“How does it feel to be Tsar?” Cygnus asks. He’s travelled all the way from Mars just for the wedding, as has Fenrir.
“I’m not really Tsar…” Aegus says.
I grab him by the arm and smile wide. “He
is
Tsar! Don’t listen to him.”
“So,” Fenrir says, narrowing his eyes. “Should I call you ‘Great Brother Aegus’ or ‘His Excellency?’ Which pompous title do you prefer.”
Aegus grits his teeth and says, “Anya is in charge here. She is Tsarina through birth…I’m just…the husband of the Tsarina. It’s not so difficult to understand.”
Fenrir sips his drink. “So…I guess it’s Great Brother Aegus then.”
“You guys know you can just call me Aegus. Stop being assholes.”
“I don’t know…even though you’re my brother, I feel like I need to give you
some
kind of title,” Cygnus says, holding his glass up and pointing behind us.
We turn around and see the giant statue. It’s just “The Marauder” statue, but I can’t help but feel it bears a striking resemblance to Aegus. Most of the people in Sankt Petersburg are even calling it “Aegus the Great.”
“Was that your idea, Anya?” Fenrir asks.
“No,” I say. “I wanted to commemorate the Marauders ending Imperial rule on Venus. It will be one of the most important days in human history.
“Yeah,” Cygnus says, “But was it your idea to make the Marauder look like Aegus?”
I beam a wide smile, look up at Cygnus, and give what I hope is an imperceptible nod.
“Let’s drink to His Excellency,” Cygnus says. “To The Great Brother of Mars, His Excellency the Tsar of Venus, and First Warrior of the Marauder Fleet!”
“I’m going to punch you,” Aegus says, smiling.
Fenrir hands me a drink, but I see Irena out of the corner of my eye, and she slaps the glass out of Fenrir’s hand. It shatters to the ground, and Irena glares up at Fenrir. And then Yulia is beside her, appearing as if out of nowhere.
“Tsarina,” Irena says, “You must not drink. Even if pigheaded Marauder man wants you to.”
“That’s what my wife calls me too,” Fenrir says, holding out a hand.
“The Tsarina is pregnant! She mustn’t drink!” Irena shouts.
And she shouts it way too loud, because everyone is suddenly turning toward me, big smiles plastered on their faces.
“Congratulations!” Donovan shouts.
Everyone starts nodding, mumbling congratulations, and clapping.
“The ultimate and final claim has been staked!” Yulia shouts above the murmur of the crowd. “Let no other woman ride Yelda, and let no other man take the Tsarina!”
The tribespeople hoot and cheer, and the clothed Venusian elite give each other confused looks in aghast silence.
I smile and thank Yulia, and finally everyone joins in the clapping.
“That was fucking awkward,” I mumble to Aegus.
And then Aura and Fiona are on top of me, copying Yulia’s trick of appearing out of nowhere. They are sisters, and Aura is Cygnus’s wife, while Fiona is Fenrir’s.
“You better watch out!” Aura says, pointing a finger at me. “Sara is a handful!”
I smile and nod. Everyone is warning me about how difficult kids can be, but Aura and Fiona are the only two women in the solar system who know what having Seraphim—human-Marauder chidren—is like.
“Sara is stronger than me already,” Aura says. “And she can be even more stubborn than her father.”
Cygnus scowls at her.
“But it’s worth it!” she says, “I love her more than anything…do you know if yours is a girl or a boy?”
I know, actually, as of two days ago, but I’ve been keeping it secret, to surprise Aegus.
“We don’t know!” Aegus says, “But I’ll be so happy either way! If it’s a girl, I think we will name her Olenna—“
“What if it’s a boy?” Fiona asks.
“Arthur,” Aegus says, stone-cold confidence covering his face.
Fenrir spits out his drink, and his eyes bulge. If I had a drink, I’d spit it out too.
“
Arthur!”
I shout. “We are
not
naming our son ‘Arthur,’ where the hell did you—“
Aegus bursts into laughter. “I was just messing with Fenrir, there’s this scientist back on Titan who he can’t stand. If it’s a boy, I was actually thinking ‘Ramses.’”
“Ramses,” I say, thinking it over. “I like that name.”
I
slam
the door with one hand, and grip my gun with the other. It’s my first day on Earth, and I’m already breaking the rules. I was supposed to meet up with the Chicago Police Department the moment my shuttle touched down, but I got a tip before I even broke orbit, and I don’t have time for bullshit bureaucracy
I slam the door again, harder this time, and I keep pounding.
“Fuck it,” I mutter. “Time to break some more rules.”
I kick the door, expecting it to break into pieces, but it just wobbles and bends. Dammit. There’s too many Seraphim and Marauders on Earth now, and no one feels safe living in a house where a Seraph like me can just break the door open like tissue paper.
“I can smell you inside!” I shout. “I’m a Seraph, not a cop!”
The guy inside is Seraphim as well. I hear a few footsteps from within, moving toward the door.
“Leave me alone then, man. You know what’s up!”
“I’m a peacekeeper!” I shout through the door. If he’d open the fucking door I wouldn’t have to shout.
“For real?” he says. “Prove it.”
“Then open the door and I’ll show you my badge.”
“No way!”
Alright. We’ll do this the hard way. Peacekeepers--in theory--are the only ones authorized to use Marauder weaponry, and humans haven’t quite figured out compact plasma pistols yet.
“Back away from the door,” I shout.
“What you doing, man?”
“I’m proving to you I’m a peacekeeper.”
I adjust the gun to fire a wide blast at low velocity, then pull the trigger.
The plasma shoots out, nearly coating the door. Within moments the door is melting, and the smell of burning wood makes me want to go for some smoked ribs, at least until the wood melts down into an acrid stink.
When the door is nothing but a smoking pile of chemicals, I leap over and into the asshole Seraph’s apartment. He’s staring wide-eyed at the smouldering remains of his door, and his pale pink ears are bending back and forth in anger.
“You burned my door down!” He shouts, “That’s not very peaceful!”
“What’s your name,” I ask, holstering my weapon.
“Kaleb,” he says.
“Where’s your roommate, Kaleb? I’m Ramses.”
I hold out my badge.
“I don’t know, man,” Kaleb says. “Sanga doesn’t tell me where he goes--”
I reach out a hand and shove Kaleb’s chest until his back slams into the wall. He grabs my forearm to try to break free, but I squeeze his wrist and bend his arm backward. He’s strong, but he doesn’t have the training I do.
“Ahhh,” He shouts, wincing. “Shit, man, let me go!”
I don’t let go. I grip him harder, and bend his arm way too far in the direction it’s not meant to go. “Talk and I let go.”
“They’ll kill me!” he hisses. “You won’t!”
I bend his arm further, just short of breaking it, but I don’t go further.
He screams out in pain, but just keeps muttering. “They’ll kill me! I can’t talk. I don’t wanna die, man!”
I finally let go of his arm, and he grabs hold of it and backs away from me as if I were a venomous snake.
“Who will kill you?” I ask.
“I’m not saying a word,” Kaleb says.
“I think it’s the Marauders from the Dark Star,” I say. “And I think they have Seraphim from Earth working for them.”
I shove him into the wall again, and I look deep into his pale green eyes. They widen in fear when I mention the Dark Star, and he looks down, avoiding my gaze.
“Mind if I take a look inside, Kaleb?” I ask. “I never saw you here. You were out getting drunk, so I had to burn your door down and search the place top to bottom.”
He nods at me, grabs his wallet, and rushes outside.
I ransack the place, tearing out every drawer, dresser, and cabinet. There’s nothing there. Based on Sanga’s room, he does nothing but eat jerky and smoke. The floor is covered in ashes and jerky wrappers, and--
I hear a faint footstep behind me, and suddenly the telltale sound of a human gun--oiled metal plates sliding against each other.
I jump and roll, and the moment I leave the floor, I hear the gunshot explode behind me.
I pull my own gun out as I roll, and I raise it toward the shooter and fire--not having the luxury of checking who it is before I kill him.
And then I see it’s Kaleb, with a hole clean through his stomach. The gun drops out of his hand, and his mouth hangs wide open.
His body collapses to the ground, and I search him. He’s got nothing on him but the gun, but I heard his keys jangling when he walked out.
I grab my phone and shout into it as I run. “Chicago PD, this is Ramses Ivanov! I made a...pitstop before reporting in. I’ve got a suspect dead and a potential terrorist attack unfolding. Requesting backup!”
I check the alley around the corner, and spot a dumpster. Before diving into the dumpster--a dirty lesson I learned a few years back--I check beneath and behind it, and I find Kaleb’s keys and phone. The phone is locked, but when I wave my badge over it, it opens right up.
I scroll to his message and see one from Sanga.
“
Kill him, then meet us at the station.”
I shout into my own phone. “Train station! Terrorists at the train station!”
Shit. My shuttle
landed
at the train station, I was
right
there. I had to sneak around the main lobby to ditch the cop they sent me to meet. Elise something or other. It’s a good thing I lost her, or this attack would have happened while I was getting my ass kissed at their backwater police station.
M
y phone lights up
, and it’s the chief, of course.
I pick up and hear him already shouting.
“Where the hell is our VIP? Don’t tell me you lost him! I know his shuttle landed over an hour ago!”
I grit my teeth and take a deep breath. I speak in a calm voice back into my phone. “Sir, he told me he would meet me just under the clock in the main lobby. I’m standing under the clock, and have been all this time. He’s ignored all my messages. He was ordered to report in with us, so he must have chosen to disobey--”
“Don’t blame it on him!” The chief shouts. “Now you’re going to get the Tsar of fucking Venus on our case. As if we don’t have enough on our plate--”
I mute the phone.
I take a sip of my coffee and continue waiting. If Ramses fucking Ivanov wants to dick us around, that’s his choice, but I will not be the one who takes the heat for his bullshit.
Just as I’m about to unmute my phone to see if the Chief is still there, it flashes red, and an emergency message starts to broadcast right into the implants in my ears, bypassing the phone entirely.
“Chicago PD, this is Ramses Ivanov! I made a...pitstop before reporting in. I’ve got a suspect dead and a potential terrorist attack unfolding. Requesting backup!”
A map of his location displays right onto my eyes--more implants--and I realize he’s less than ten blocks away.
I run with my coffee still in hand, shoving my way out of the train station. I try to throw the coffee into a trash bin as I run, but the lid pops off, and not-quite-burning-hot coffee spills all over my arm.
“Fucking Ivanov,” I grunt, running faster as I clear the bulk of the crowd.
I shove the doors open, turn left, and race down the street.
I’m in pretty good shape, and at this pace I can probably make it to Ivanov’s location in just under seven minutes.
The bastard not only disobeyed orders, but managed to kill someone in his very first hour on Earth. Peacekeeper my ass.
I’m halfway to his location when another emergency broadcast from him shouts right into my ears.
“Train station! Terrorists at the train station!”
I dig my heels into the sidewalk to stop myself.
“You
have
to be shitting me, I was just there!”
And now I’ll be there a few minutes before Ivanov. I’m sure a Seraph can run faster than me, but not
that
much faster.
Ivanov is breathing heavy as he describes the suspects, and I can tell by the map that he’s gaining on me. I might only get there a minute or so ahead of him.
“We’re looking for one or more Seraphim,” he says. “Prime suspect is named Sanga Horizont. He’s 6’8”, medium build for a Seraph, long hair…”
“I’m almost there, Ivanov,” I say, gasping for breath.
I can see the train station again as I turn the corner.
“You in uniform?” He asks me.
He’s no longer on the emergency channel, just directly speaking to me.
“Yes.”
“Stop running.” he says. “You’ll scare them.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, asshole.”
I do stop running though. He’s got a point. It’s normal for uniformed police to be around the train station.
“And stop those cars!” Ramses shouts. “Send backup, but don’t make it so obvious.”
I see all the backup on my map slow down and begin parking on the roadside.
I’ll definitely be the first to arrive now, but if this Sanga guy doesn’t know I’m onto him, he might not shoot me on sight.
I walk into the main lobby, but pretend to look down at my phone. I scan the room from the corner of my eyes, acting completely disinterested and unaware of any danger.
The first thing that catches my eye is the tallest man in the station. Not a Seraph, but a pure-blooded Marauder. He looks like he’s pushing 60 years old. His skin is deep purple rather than the pale pink of a Seraph, and everything about him screams danger.
“Got a suspicious Marauder--” I start to say, reaching for my gun.
Something grabs my arm as I go for the gun, and I hear Ramses Ivanov’s voice--in the flesh--right in my ear.
“Don’t mess with this one,” he says. “I’ve got this.”
I spin around, not sure if I’m going to gut punch him or kick him in the balls.
But then I see him. He’s almost as tall as a pure-blooded Marauder, and his face looks like a chiseled marble statue back from the Imperial days. His cheekbones are impossibly high, his strong jaw is both imposing and gorgeous, and his eyes are the vibrant teal of the northern lights in the dead of winter.
His eyes widen as he sees me, and I see his mouth open just wide enough to exThank pose his perfect white teeth. His ears twitch three times, and then stop.
“You’re...Elise?” He says.
I force myself to calm down, trying to will my heart to stop pounding so hard in my chest. He’s absolutely drop dead gorgeous, yes, but he’s a cocky asshole, and if I don’t keep my guard up, he might just get me killed.