CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Sekiguchi stayed close behind Thalia, mindful that she was unaware of anything but what was in front of her. He guarded her, his blade singing swift arcs through the electrified air, delivering death to any who dared try to assault her from behind.

Someone managed to sound the alarm, and they were soon mobbed by the security of the entire compound, which was significant given the deserted condition of the planet. The Kaizoku were noted for their paranoia – and today would gain more reasons for it.

Those looking down on the carnage from higher floors could scarcely believe it was real, and so had no idea how to explain it to their superiors when they ran in breathless and panicking to give the report:

Two warriors, one female and one male, had destroyed dozens of their troops in mere moments, without even seeming to make much of an effort. The woman was on fire, quite literally – her hair consisted entirely of serpentine flames, darting out with a deadly bite at any who approached too near and lighting them ablaze like dry kindling; her fingers became knives at a mere gesture; an incautious look into her eyes left men vomiting seawater, drowning on dry land, though this had long been a desert planet. Her existence was impossible, she could not be real, but the massacre she swept before her certainly was.

The male was not so mysterious; he was just an especially agile human, from all they could tell – but he was no less deadly. His blade sang through the air faster than the eye could follow it, dripping with the ichor of many lost lives. He had a look of joyful rage that was terrifying, for it told clearly the tale of one who had long awaited this day and would give no quarter, take no prisoners, leave none alive.

“Put the lower floors on lockdown at once,” the Lieutenant in charge of the building said irritably. “We’ll just have to rehire new staff once this is over, and I don’t look forward to explaining that one to Headquarters,” he said, shaking his head in exasperation. “This is ludicrous. No one long survives stealing from the Kaizoku, whatever kind of circus tricks they may be able to perform,” he said angrily, theft being the only comprehensible motive for aggression where the Kaizoku were concerned.

His confidence rallied his underlings; his orders were followed at once, with no warning given to those on the lower floors, left to the mercy – or lack of it – of the two deadly invaders.

Thalia was not prone to fatigue; the restless energy of the planet’s embittered spirits had gone so long without an outlet that it poured forth from her in an endless, effortless cataract of violence.

Sekiguchi was not endowed with superhuman strength, though some believed all samurai had it; yet he soared with her somehow in her glorious outpouring of destructive wrath, his arm never slowing as he cut down any who dared approach his goddess. This was what he had dreamt of for so long, he thought, almost delirious with the fulfillment of these moments.

At last they were alone, surrounded by the corpses they'd made, and they had come to a sealed door.

“There are more of them; the worst ones are up there,” Thalia said, her voice having become several voices in unison, ranging from bass to treble and everything between. Sekiguchi spared a brief thought for his lieutenant, thankful that Aoi had not come with them. That voice was enough to drive the sanity from even the nearly-deaf; what it would do to Wataru did not bear thinking of.

She had no patience for delay; she growled at the door in the mad chorus that had overtaken her voice, her bloodlust not appeased.

“I know, love. They’ve locked down the building to protect themselves,” he explained, knowing she would then give an ample demonstration of how useless such gestures were in the face of her destroying wrath.

She looked at him suddenly, and his hair stood up to see that her eyes had gone black, like deep pools filled with ink. The pupils were serpentine and glowing like molten lava. “You’ve been wounded,” she said in her dozen voices, with hunger rather than concern.

“Not remarkably; just scratched. It happens in battle to us mortals,” he said.

He was not prepared for her sudden swift nearness; she came very close, lifted his sword hand in hers up to their faces, then licked his blood from a superficial wound in his arm. Sekiguchi caught his breath, his eye dilating with arousal; she stepped even closer and licked the blood from a cut on his cheek as well, slowly and sensuously, like a large, deadly cat grooming its partner.

He turned his face, pleasantly shocked when his lips met hers. Her lips were warm and still stained with his blood, her fangs sharp near both corners of her mouth. He groaned and tasted the salty tang of his own blood from her lips, thinking no sensation had ever been so divine.

She was almost pure instinct now, a mere channel for the horror of madness that poured from the spirits of the murdered land. Something deep within her still knew she had another life, another purpose, and wanted to pull back – but it was a tiny island of sanity lost in a tsunami of vengeful wrath. She could not hear her own voice any longer; her body was not her own.

She would not have recognized her friends if they came up to her now; she would not even have remembered Harada’s, Seizo’s, or Gwyneth’s names, though she would always know them on some level. Nothing existed except what was around her.

Her instincts drove her, and they recognized Sekiguchi as kin. Bloodlust, fury, and sex have gone together for as long as energy has combined with matter, creating souls attached to flesh. She wanted to kill everything left in this building, she wanted to avenge the lives so brutally erased on this planet, and she wanted Sekiguchi inside her – all these drives raged in her at once.

She grabbed at Sekiguchi’s crotch and found him hard, as expected. She smiled in visceral feminine triumph, her fangs catching the light.

“We can play when work is finished,” she said, the slitted pupils of her black eyes glowing with red fire. As abruptly as she had come near, she pushed him away and turned her attention to the sealed door.

Sekiguchi smiled, exulting in her raw power and sexuality; she was the counterpart he needed, just as he’d always known since her file had fallen into his hands. His hopeless jealousy of the Shinsengumi Vice-Commander had been for nothing – this had been all she needed to become her true divine self; the incomprehensible things she had spouted about balance, light, and being motivated by love – all of that had been so easily swept away in the storm of her Fury.

He was blissfully unaware of how intensely haunted a place this was, full of vengeful beings that had overwhelmed Thalia’s personality, taking over her body and her powers. The Fury in her was in league with them, since their cause was just; but she was caught in a maelstrom far too big for her.

The elemental spirits directed their will toward breaking down the door. This was no obstacle for the land elemental, who formed from Thalia’s hand a blade hard as diamond, sharp as viper’s fangs. This made short work of the door, and then they were up the stairs, slaughtering dozens more guards who rushed to try to stop them.

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Their movement was grim poetry, a true Danse Macabre; there was horrible beauty in the way they wove with threads of blood and entrails in, out, around each other, over, under, then back-to-back, leaving a trail of mangled corpses in their wake. Nothing stopped them, very little slowed them down.

Sekiguchi let Thalia set the pace, following her lead with the ease and grace of long experience. This was the closest he had come to pure happiness since childhood, when certain summer days and nights were full of the glowing memory of love, safety, and confidence in their chosen path, the way of the samurai.

At last, they stood before the terrified Lieutenant in charge of this place. Thalia clenched her fists, staring at him. Usually she insisted on talking to those she punished, believing the words would help; the soul would remember long after the mind, and apply lessons learned more easily when they could be comprehended. The purpose of justice, after all, was to facilitate the learning process on this long, arduous journey of souls; if no one learned anything from her, she was useless.

So she believed, and had always acted in this lifetime. But there were no words left for the spirits of this place; their voices could only shriek, moan, cry, and scream. Thalia herself was buried deep beneath their seething whirlpool.

Her body stepped forward, the elementals having decided on their method of execution for the creature who had grown so fat on the lifeblood of their beloved planet. Thalia’s left hand forced his head back; her right hand opened directly above his face, and sand began to pour from her fingers. It went up his nose, into his mouth, into his eyes, pouring and rushing until his screams were silenced by the weight and volume of the sand still pouring into him. He had left this land nothing but dead sand; it was fitting that he should die by what he had wrought.

Now the last imperative drive of the dying land: to reaffirm the promise of new life. Thalia tried again to reassert herself, but could not make her will heard or seen in the raging storm. The mindless, murderous, starving elementals pushed her onward blindly, urging her out into the dead landscape with Sekiguchi behind her. She stopped near a flat rock, pointed at him, and ordered, “Undress.” Once he had, she pushed him down onto the smooth stone surface, then tore off her own clothes.

He was ready for her; she was not gentle, being possessed now by far more than just her own Fury. She mounted him swiftly, pinned his wrists with her hands, then bit his neck hard enough to draw blood. She savored the salty mineral tang of it on her tongue, then shared it with him, since he clearly enjoyed it as much as she did.

Their mating was brutal, as full of blind fury and force as the whirlwind of death they had created in the building behind them. They were soon spent, both bleeding from multiple minor wounds, Sekiguchi euphoric and Thalia still possessed. She had stopped fighting it now and turned away in despair from what her traitorous body was doing; she no longer wanted the elementals to leave, because once they did, she would have to deal with the aftermath of what they had done to her – and through her.

As soon as they entered the ship, however, the Elementals did leave her. She collapsed onto the floor unconscious, her body unable to absorb so many consecutive shocks. Sekiguchi, alarmed, carried her to her quarters, laying her gently on the bed.

He noticed then all the small things that had escaped him outside: The ends of her fingers were burned and raw, the ends of her hair were singed, and she had a raging fever; those would be results of all the fire, he thought. There was a thin stream of blood leaking from the corner of her right eye, and a slightly thicker flow from her right ear. She was covered, as he was, in small cuts and bruises, but that didn’t alarm him nearly as much as the bleeding eye and ear or the heat coming in waves from her body.

He stayed with her for several minutes, bathing her face with a damp cloth, coaxing her to drink a little water. Finally, he thought she looked more peaceful, and could bring himself to leave her side.

He was widely feared and hated as a nearly inhuman monster, and so he very often was; but the monster Thalia manifested had aroused every tender and reverent feeling he had left. He had already been more than half in love with her, but now it was different; now he would do anything, even die, if she wanted it.

There was much to discuss with Aoi, and a few things to decide about their next move. Thalia was far ahead of where he had believed she would be; the change in her had been so startling, so complete. So magnificent.

***

Harada fell asleep briefly once the ship’s engine shifted into third. It would be at least four hours before they reached the vicinity of the nearest of three planets he had decided upon as the most likely candidates for Thalia’s current location. There was nothing for him to do once katana maintenance was complete. He was exhausted emotionally, though physically he had been through far worse than this.

He slept best, if at all, with one of her uniform cravats that she had not yet washed spread over his face as if he were a corpse; he no longer knew if her scent really clung to it, or if he had created a sensory memory powerful enough to give him that illusion. Whichever it was, he found it comforting.

The horrific nightmare that soon visited him, however, drove even that tiny bit of comfort shrieking into the distance. He dreamt of a dead planet haunted by spirits long driven mad by pain and rage without an outlet; he dreamt that Thalia walked unaware into their lair and was swallowed by their gaping collective maw. He watched, helpless, as they split her apart into equal portions and consumed her.

He woke sweating and covered in goosebumps, full of certainty that something truly horrible had happened.

He lit a cigarette and noticed how badly his hands were trembling. “Tch,” he reproached himself irritably. He would not be at his best for fighting if he could not even control the shakes. Emotion needed to subordinate itself, at least for a while. He sat and meditated, determined to reach his normal clarity and control; it was worthless to achieve a discipline that failed you when you most needed it, he reminded himself.

Yamamoto knocked on his door not much later. Gwyneth had obviously been involved in sneaking him onto the ship despite contrary orders, but the whole thing could be dealt with at some later date. Harada would normally have administered discipline in some form already, but he was too distraught for it now, and not even certain it was merited.

He and Okada both knew Yamamoto adored Thalia in his own way, and he deserved to make his own decision as to whether he should come. The main reason Harada had denied him was for Kato’s sake; he had wanted to leave at least one of the officers he trusted most to help the Chief administer while the rest of them were gone.

But that was all beside the point now. “What is it, Yama?” he asked wearily.

“The first candidate planet is within range, Vice-Commander,” Yamamoto replied. “Lady Gwyneth also desires a word when you’re available,” he added, blushing a little.

“Of course. Is she in her quarters?”

“Yes, Vice-Chief.”

“Why not escort her to the main deck? She might pick up something we can’t as we approach the planet,” Harada suggested.

Yamamoto bowed and hurried toward Gwyneth’s room.

This planet was larger than Earth, and lacked Earth’s striking color scheme. The surface was always semi-dark, covered by the thick haze of clouds in the atmosphere that never fully dissipated. Faint shifting hues and textures could be detected where the haze temporarily thinned, but overall not much could be seen of it from space.

The name it had been given by the natives was unpronounceable for humans, but translated roughly to ‘Memory’. There were several stories that claimed to give the true explanation for this, although the one generally favored by most natives was that it was called ‘Memory’ in honor of their original home planet, which had been invaded and taken over by a hostile species thousands of years ago.

Harada had never been here before, but had learned enough about the inhabitants to make it through polite introductions and then ask about Thalia. If any Earth ships had docked recently, it would be known. The possibility of docking somewhere hidden on this planet was next to none, since most of its environment was toxic to humans; they could only manage for brief time periods in the climate-controlled environments created in designated buildings on the surface.

No one really thought this was a likely place for Sekiguchi to bring Thalia, but it was the nearest one that fit the location radius and was even a remote possibility; it was also on the way to both planets he considered most likely.

Gwyneth arrived on deck with Yamamoto as they began a nearer approach. She was obviously upset, and Harada’s stomach dropped like a stone into a pit when he looked into her wide blue-green eyes.

She grasped his sleeve in one hand. “Something is wrong,” she said.

“I can see that,” he replied, leading her to a seat at a console. “What’s happened?”

“I’m not sure. All I’m certain of is that Thalia wanted to die about an hour ago; she’s still feeling that, but not as strongly or consistently as before. I know that – and nothing more, which I know is frustrating – because my empathic gift is so strong toward family members that distance makes no difference; if the emotion is very strong, I always feel it.”

Harada remembered his nightmare with a sudden unwelcome rush of vivid clarity; it dizzied him for a worrying moment. He bit the inside of his cheek to bring himself sharply back into focus.