Getting away with murder was all too familiar to her. Target to target, adversary to adversary, political figure to political figure, Anastasia had enough blood on her hands to take baths in.

Then again, so did her targets.

The Assassin Queen continued her walk, pace kept lax, and muscles reserved. Something had to be done about Stretis and Deustar; though the bodies were long gone, the Zudrians always had a thing for supervising the supervisors.

"That kill may or may not have been excessive," Anastasia said to herself as a four-way intersection came to her view, "and I am unsure if I cleaned up enough of my tracks…"

A clean freak, that was what one had to be in order to succeed as an assassin. Unlike regular spirit manipulators, who had their flashy powers from the soul to ruin things, Anastasia's spirit energies only gave her speed, reflexes, and strength. The bullets couldn't keep up with her and even armored plating bent from her fists.

But strength alone couldn't stop an army from swarming her.

"And I do not need the police riding my groin," Anastasia snarled, whipping her head around for any suspicious sightings, "neither do the slaves. If I get caught, this entire operation will fall."

A beep from her suit almost sent her legs primed to jump. One, two, three, two, one… was an almost recognizable rhythm of beeping patterns. From her adventures in stealing valuables, Anastasia knew it well: tachyon communicators.

Devices that could interface with most satellite systems and influence them. Faster than light messages, a void terminal that piloted AI within a cloud system, and tachyons that brought messages through wormholes. This thing was the boon of all Zudrian military control. And it was somehow nearby, and here of all places!

"You made a run for it and almost gave us quite the slip." an all-channels transmission said in a gravelly, tearing voice.

It was already unlocked and on.

Perfect.

She hungrily smiled and made a sharp turn.

Into the alleys once again, sneaking and tiptoeing past rotten rodents and uncleaned trash. The Zudrians loved hiding the worst of their cities in plain sight.

"Give me the communicator," the voice bellowed, echoing from both her intercom and the alleys nearby, "give it to me now and you walk away with your life!"

If her instincts were correct, someone was being robbed and had broadcast the interaction as a cry for help. The assailant had to have been armed and dangerous, and if Anastasia had a guess, he worked for some space pirates. After all, with enough skill, the communicator’s code could be hacked, trifled with, and repurposed to cripple an entire Zudrian fleet’s communications; any pirate enterprise with a skilled hacker would literally kill for such a tool.

Pirates weren’t the only ones. That tachyon communicator was a blatant lock and key in Anastasia’s own quest to defile the authorities. How perfect that such a device should show up right when she needed to hide the murder of two guards from the police. If the gods, heavens bless their hearts for all the horrid things they wrought, were behind this, then the Assassin Queen would have to make sure to buy the divine mastermind in question a drink.

Anastasia had a job to do. The click of her boots sounded much like crickets, unassuming, harmless, and silent enough to escape the notice of the people now within earshot.

"Go fuck yourself!" The voice had been distinctly Zudrian, holding the same thick accent that the lower caste peasants had. Instead of words, a pistol’s hammer clicked. "Please, I'll do anything! Just don't take it from me!"

Only the gods knew how someone in such a poor neighborhood with no security could possess such high-grade technology. Judging by the accent, the poor creature was a peasant. But what Anastasia knew was that she needed it more than some good-for-nothing space pirates.

One more corner turned, and the robbery came into full view. The peasant was clad in a dirty shirt and baggy pants, looking like the definition of a prole. A firearm, likely an antimatter pistol judging by the grey color of the grip, held still against his head.

"Please! Don't hurt me!"

"Last chance," the robber growled, "give me the communications device or I will-"

Move.

The world became a blur, Anastasia's feet carried her forward. She lunged her fist toward the gunman's head, throwing him toward the wall. He reached for his gun, a move she anticipated enough to spring out her daggers and slash midair.

He fired.

But the shots went only into the air.

The Assassin Queen wrapped an arm around his neck and held him still against her. The robber kicked and thrashed within her grip, but raw muscle made him putty in her hands. Two fingers came close to a pulsating vein.

The fingers jabbed the target's neck.

Anastasia let her enemy fall to the floor, eyes dead and emotionless. Even with such an expression, a smirk remained on her face. The Zudrian prole shook and shuddered, audibly crying loudly enough to get the assassin's attention.

The Assassin Queen turned to him, dusting her hands off, and advanced. The prole made no moves beyond keeping a gaze that shivered without control.

"You seem to be just a poor creature, yeah?" Small talk, small talk was how she'd get to him.

"Yeah… m-m-miss, I was kicked off my lord's estate," the prole explained, "I don't have a home and wander the streets."

Anastasia felt something prick her heart, the Zudrian Empire was an abomination, but the masses were redeemable. "He sounds like quite the ideal citizen… treating the weak like utter garbage."

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"I know, Miss, I just wish things were different. That I wouldn't be living like this."

"Hey," Anastasia fell to her knees and brought the Zudrian's gaze to her, "do you want to give that lord and the entire empire their due?"

"Of course, I do," the Zudrian beamed brightly enough to shock Anastasia, "the empire is completely terrible… but nobody in the Cordas Galaxy sees that…"

"Let me offer you a deal," the Assassin Queen confidently smirked, "you give me the communicator, along with your lord's name, and I can give him the punishment he deserves for treating you like shit."

"Really?"

"Absolutely, your lord won't be able to touch you; he'll be too busy running from me for as long as he still has legs… and we both know what happens if he loses them."

Anastasia couldn't believe how simple this task had been. All she had to do was save someone's life, take the valuable technology they had, and she did this while upping her self-esteem. It felt good to be queen.

The communicator leapt into her hand, paper thin, glass, beeping oscillators and all. She caught the device in a split second and accessed the interface.

INTERGALACTRON BROWSER.

PRESS / TO SEARCH

The / key had been immediately pressed. Her brain moved quickly, navigating through menus and recalling training sessions she had with technology.

/HOME/BLADE/ETERNALCROWN/DEFENSE

She entered the defense system directory.

/HOME/BLADE/ETERNALCROWN/DEFENSE

The Nova Zudrian Cosmopolitan Movement had quite the hacking figures. They developed scripts and shortcuts to bypass security. Anastasia couldn't contact them now, but a few tricks remained in her mind.

FILE… DEUSTAR, STRETIS, PERSONAL BRAIN DOWNLOAD.

The Zudrian state, with all its surveillance, made itself vulnerable by storing copies of officers' memory. Anastasia got to work, pounding cold scripts into the void terminal.

SEND SCRIPT 'MIMICRY' TO CORONA ETERNUS MILITARY POLICE SERVER?

"Yes," the very word she uttered aloud was the command on the system interface, "this will keep the law off my bum for long enough…"

"Uhh… Miss?"

Anastasia's face blanched upon hearing that phrase. The delivery was nervous and filled with clear anxiety, so the prole wasn't a sudden threat. A niggling voice in the back of her head told her to say something. This prole knew nothing of his country, he knew little beyond Corona Eternus.

The Assassin Queen placed the tachyon communicator into a retractable chest pocket, keeping the device safe and within reach and spoke. "You'd better get to safety, little prole… get out of here!"

The prole flustered and sputtered. "I-I-I don't have anywhere to go-"

"When the evacuation ships arrive and you see soldiers plastered with scales on their chests," she held her arms out, hands positioned as an equal weight on a scale, "you follow their procedures, no questions asked, got it?"

"Why are you saying this?" The civilian continued talking even as the Assassin Queen had long turned to walk away. "What's going on, how do you know?" Anastasia deeply inhaled when the streets came into sight. "Why do you care?"

She stopped and turned her head to the right; her gaze captured the sweltering prole still. "This galaxy has beautiful people, people like you. It'd be a shame if you weren't alive to see all of it."

Her piece was said and done, but the mission had barely been completed.

With that realized, Anastasia took off on the streets yet again with a confident demeanor on her expression. The police would have a presence still, but with the MIMICRY script they would deal with a faux Stretis and Deustar speaking to them. Though previous conflicts made her revile AIs, instances like this were lovely.

"Anastasia," a transmission from Solares sounded from her radio, "what were you doing in that back alley?"

"Hacking the Zudrian communications," she quickly answered, "we will have a smoother entry into our target destination. E.T.A. will be sooner this way."

"You are quite the sly creature, excellent."

Anastasia flipped her hair and hummed. "No problem, Matty, no problem." The Solares did not transmit his response at the nickname, but it was still satisfying to imagine his fury.

In all her years of travel, the Assassin Queen had never seen a city district that was truly empty. Typical cities had quiet neighborhoods, to be sure, with only a few vehicles and residents punctuating their silence, yet none had this: the section of Corona Eternus ahead was entirely abandoned. The directions, tuned to avoid any unnecessary encounters, were urging Anastasia toward her first ever ghost town.

She made a run for it.

No powers this time were needed, just speed and skills. She bolted through windows, breaking glass and darting through abandoned buildings. Never out of breath, for her endurance taught her better than that.

Window after window, door after door. Anastasia must have poked holes through twenty layers in this metropolitan carcass. What stopped her was not the end of the district’s corpse, but the sight of power lines leading through it, clean and straight.

A better shortcut.

A jump threw her on top of a ledge and upper body strength forced her up.

“Anastasia?”

“Solares?” she answered, jumping atop a windowsill.

When her head poked into a window, Solares spoke. “The police have it out for you.” Of course, they did, but did they know who did the killing? “They do not know that you specifically are here.” Anastasia was already hopping onto the next building, moving through the vacated interiors with a furious focus. “But they may find you-”

“Please, Matty,” she scoffed, “I know what you are thinking-”

Anastasia could bet her entire life that Solares wanted to barge in and menace law enforcement into getting away from her. Now was not the time to have the entire planet’s security scrambling to fire its every weapon in an attempt to simultaneously sacrifice themselves and rid Zudra of a famed rival. The time where that would come in would be later.

“If you are ever in danger,” the King of Demons vowed, “I will come out.”

“Thanks, Matty, I appreciate it.”

She always supposed that Solares was called the "King of Demons" by the Zudrians for a reason. When Anastasia first met him long ago, she found out the way the Zudrians did; wherever Solares went, the military police would be reduced to charred bodies and slashed flesh. He had the flashy powers non-assassins had, but his were a special kind of devastating…

Solares was notorious for the amount of destruction he caused; armies, politicians, and military leaders were terrified of him. Unfortunately, his constant urge to throw himself into battle led to numerous avoidable clashes. Even though the Assassin Queen and the Demon King would emerge triumphant, plenty of valued time and energy went to waste. Hence, hearing her adopted brother willingly decide to lay low was a relief.

Anastasia had already arrived at a city power plant. The structure had a cylindrical shape, spanned two city blocks, and stood as a monument to Zudrian grandiosity in even the utilities.

This was one of many power plants.

"Watcher," Anastasia placed Solares on hold for the moment, "tell the other assassins that when they get here, they ought to place EMP charges on the power grids. We need those fuckers crippled when we make our move. Also, I want information on Lucius Dunten sent to my systems… I have a bonus mission planned for him…"

"Understood, Unit Assassin Queen."

Excellent.

Everything was in motion.

Knowing how the power grids functioned, if one went down, then electromagnetic pulses would streak through the others. Even if the grids still lived, radio signals would be destroyed.

She had her title of “Assassin Queen” for many reasons. Normal assassins tried to break into grids, got caught, and either died or got captured. On the other hand, the Queen understood her targets enough to know just how to hit them where it hurt.

Anastasia reached into her suit's containment package and pulled out two, silver-plated batteries. Each one held millions of volts worth of electricity. This would recharge the plants, but when the plants charged, a virus would enter the computers running them. Deception at its finest, something any Assassin Queen would love.

She left the grids, north and south, east and west, equipped with EMP charges. These would keep the Zudrians scrambling with their technology enough for the revolutionary army to position itself. The best part of this arrangement is that the military police wouldn’t waste their skins in chasing an Assassin Queen around the world without communications or power grid. Only a moron would willingly choose a battle when they were crippled and surely Zudra didn’t seize Cruvelia by being stupid.

Get the slaves out first.

Ruin the planet later.

The Zudrians wouldn't see her coming.

That thought comforted Anastasia's broiling belly.