Infinity (12 page)

   
“You are a sick person spreading sickness and sadness. I no longer call
you my brother,” Daxu Korth replies.

   
“Now that I’m in your orbit,” Subjugator replies, using an old
Quewythian idiom, “We need to watch each other’s back.”
 

   
“Stay out of my life,
Hyukitron,” I
won’t kill you.

  
 
“But I can’t, you see, we’re
already in each other’s lives,” responded Subjugator.

   
Pirate Lord Nase
Yennock steps into the conversation. “I’m sorry if I step on your touching
moment, but can you two speak Universal?”

   
“Why don’t we settle this in the arena?” Suggests Boa.

   
“What do you mean?” replies Subjugator. “Me and my brother? Or you and
Wathesan Fla-Fla?”

   
“Now wait a minute,” Protests Wathesan. “I’m not a fighter.”

   
“Oh stop your whining,” says Boa. “Did you think he was serious? I meant
our wizards against theirs. Let’s see who’s got the strongest magic.”

   
“Now you’re talking, Boa,” responds Subjugator. “You talk better than
you fight.”

   
“Maybe I should be boss then,” replies Boa with a crooked grin. A
tightening of the cuffs, to which all of the captives grimaced and groaned,
interrupted their talking.

   
“No,” said Wathesan Fla-Fla. “He’s going to torture us to death.”

   
“Not so,” replies Daxu Korth. “I have something else in mind for you
though. I would not be so foolish as to wager my kingdom in the arena in the
hands of magicians and illusionists who claim to harness the elements, but cannot
even harness their own consciousness.”

   
Daxu
Korth then raises his hand and the floor beneath the captives opens and
descends and the electromagnetic web disappears. The floor then returns to
normal. The captives were taken to cells made of strong Platainium, which is
impossible to escape from. Spells are useless against it. There they all are
kept while Daxu Korth contacts Cruise by Quantum Cyber Interstellar, informing
him of all that went on.

“The criminals, including The Subjugator, are being
transferred in separated vessels to their respective areas, planets, or where
they are wanted for the most crimes against their societies.”

   
Chajux Motwreq landed his
space cruiser on the planet Reklaus in the Galaxy of Pale Oxus. It was located
halfway to Cassiopeia, being one of the Twelve Galaxies Cluster. Dvora’s
daughters could not show their faces as their mother was known there as the
vengeful wife of Daxu Korth. There was a bounty on her head now, and her
daughters too.

   
“Yes, the man...or woman,
who brings her and her spoiled brats in will live happily ever after on the
bounty value, no matter what the currency and rates are,” said a drinker at a
bar in Tyuged City, where Chajux went to trade.

   
Hearing the people talking
about Dvora, he knew she had not been arrested yet. He surmised that she must
be hiding somewhere laying low. He didn’t say anything, as he didn’t want to
draw any attention to himself or his crew who were there to drink.

   
“Any news you hear about
Dvora report it to me,” He told his men. Then he bought some Reklaus Ale and
brought it back to the cruiser.

   
“Thought you might need
this,” Chajux says to the three sisters he was helping. “It’s quite good.”

   
“How long do you think it
will take to get us to Cassiopeia?” asks Ophelia.

   
“Traveling at this rate I’d
say...about another year or so traveling at top speed.”

   
They were weary of space
travel since all of their lives they had never left their own planet. “But if
you’d rather go out there and try to find a faster vessel to take you, beware.
There’s a bounty on your heads.”

   
Hearing that, their sulking
turned to discouragement. They could not be caught and sent back to the life of
slavery they escaped from.

   
“Do you think Father will
take us back?” Asked Yeralai.

   
“Maybe...if we show we are
truly repentant and only following our mother’s orders,” replied Ophelia.

   
“He probably won’t forgive
us He’ll throw us in his dungeon,” added Emedria.

   
“Well, at least we’d be home
and not on some forgotten rock world freezing to death in some pimp’s storage
closet.”

   
“Anything would be better
than that,” says Yeralai.

They drank the
ale with Chajux and talked. “Why don’t you forget about your uncertain future,
which most likely will end up back in prison? Come away with the crew and me. We’ll
start a new life on a new world far far away. We don’t have to head back to
Cassiopeia. I and the crew might even have incurred the wrath of the king for
helping you.”

   
Yeralai looked at Chajux
with sympathetic eyes. “I don’t want that to happen to you, Chajux. We would
have no say in the matter. Only the king can decide or agree to the fate of his
children.

   
“He can forgive us too,
then,” said Emedria. “I’m sorry, sisters, but this planet is where I get off.
I’ll find a faster vessel to get me to Cassiopeia. Anyone with me?”

  
Ophelia and Yeralai looked at
Emedria with hard eyes. She knew what they were thinking. Her two younger
sisters didn’t want to go out into the streets and get caught. They wished
there was a way they could talk to their father on the Cyber Interstellar.
Chajux hadn’t used it on their trip to broadcast anything since the name of
their vessel and their location would be given away. He had yet to hear his
name on the news reports as having kidnapped the king’s daughters or having
helped them escape from their mother, but he didn’t want to take a chance of
his cruiser being recognized. Back on another planet that they landed on to do
trade, they were able to sell their spacecraft and procure another. The one
they had now was faster and had a Interstellar connection. But he still did not
want to take the chance of the daughters contacting their father only to have
their location traced and end up getting picked up by the local authorities.

   
The other crewmembers
returned to the cruiser. “This is a real hot spot. We have to leave here.”

   
“I don’t wanna get caught,”
bawled Emedria.

   
“Stay with us then and
you’ll be safe,” reassured Ophelia.

   
“If I could only talk with
my father,” assumed Yeralai. “I know he’d understand.”

   
Chajux gave the order to
blast off and turned to Ophelia, who he liked a lot. “There is a way. I have a
friend. I can contact him. He can help us. We can transmit a message through
him and he knows how to bounce it off of several galaxies and stars before it
reaches Cassiopeia. They can never trace it then.”

   
“Father? Is that really
you?” Ophelia cried as she reached out on the cyber connection with all her
heart and soul to the one person she believed would understand their
predicament. She explained everything, and that she, Emedria and Yeralai were
separated from their mother and of different hearts and minds.

   
“I need no explanation to
know you’re being truthful. My Quewythian intuition tells me such. Perhaps it
is
I
who need
your
forgiveness.”

   
“Father...I...love
you...I...” before Yeralai could finish Daxu Korth finished for her.

   
“I know that voice...it’s
Yeralai. Right?”

   
“Yes, Father...I’m sorry we
followed Mother’s pernicious will,” she sobbed.

   
“Oh, Yeralai...my sweet
daughter...I...missed you.” He replied on the visual and audial. “I won’t ask
where you are, because I already know. But do not fret my little ones. For if
you have made the estrangement from your mother, then I shall receive you and
your sisters with open arms.”

  
“ Can I talk to him?” asked
Emedria.

  
“I guess so...”

  
“Father, I am so happy to see you.”
tears streamed down her face.

  
“Now, now, Emedria, darling, I
never though of any of you less than my daughters.”

  
“Why did you send us to that horrible
place?” she probed.
 

  
“That question will be answered in
time, my kitten, But know this for certain, I will never let anything come
between me and you again. And that goes for Yeralai and Ophelia too. You have
the word of the Daxu Korth.”

   
“Greetings, Father.” Ophelia
joins in. “We were helped and rescued by Chajux Motwreq.”

   
“Ah...a southern Quewythian.
I recognize the surname and the origin. He’s from the twin planets.”

   
“You are more than
knowledgeable concerning your kingdom, Daxu Korth,” says Chajux Motwreq.

   
“The valiant deeds of your
people are recorded in our annals for future generations,” answered the king.
“Name your reward for your bravery and valiant activities in rescuing my
beloved daughters.”

   
“I only ask one thing, my
king,” replied Chajux. “I assure you, it is most valuable to me ever”

   
“What can that be, Sir
Chajux?” replied the king.

   
“You called me Sir...and why
might I ask, if it is not presumptuous of me to do so?”

   
“It is the title given to
all of my knights,” replied the king. “Your unequivocal bravery in the face of
impossible odds has earned you the title.”

   
“You know what I did?” asks
Chajux Motwreq.

   
“I not only know what you
did, Sir Chajux Motwreq, but I also know why and what you intent to ask me.”

   
“How do you know I intended
to ask for your daughter Ophelia’s hand in Matrimony?” asked the confused young
commander.

   
“I didn’t know that...and
the answer is yes...that is...if she desires it also,” answered the wise king.
“You will have the most lavish wedding ceremony Cassiopeia has ever seen.”

   
Daxu Korth had defeated The
Subjugator, and so it seemed. There they were, all of them...in the dungeon;
Daxu Korth’s mortal enemy, and his cronies. What should he do with them? After
counselling with his aides, he came to a decision. Each one of them were wanted
criminals on their own planets. He would turn them over to their respectful
authorities one by one. None of them had any connection other than they were
all pirates. He would see to it that they were punished to the full extent of
the law.

   
But Daxu Korth was jubilant.
A brave warrior and his crew had rescued three of his daughters from their
traitorous wicked mother. They were coming home. But what of the other four?
Were they safe? Were they all right? He didn’t know their whereabouts. Although
he rejoiced in the return of his youngest daughters, he mourned the fate of his
oldest, if they made the wrong choice to stay with their ghastly mother.

   
Dvora, beautiful at one
time, had degenerated into something lesser than she had ever expected. Due to
her encounters with the various planets and their suns, spores and pollen and
bacteria in the air, corruption beyond her understanding, her loveliness and strength
had diminished ferociously. She had succumbed to the baser instincts of her
evolution; sorcery. From what she had learned from the Gypsies, the magicians
and illusionists, Dvora was able to put together quite a show. The former queen
of the Twelve Galaxies Cluster had become a common entertainer, and her four
daughters her assistants on the planet they had fled to. She was delving even
further into the forces of darkness now and her daughters were not sure they
liked seeing her this way.

   
Valenza had left to live
with Sertis. The other daughters had boyfriends who took most of their time. Dvora
was the main fortuneteller on Garv and suffering from depression and
forgetfulness.

   
Sertis and his friends had
been trying to wean Dvora’s daughters away from her. They had at last
succeeded. Valenza was the first to leave the ten-bedroom home Dvora had bought
when they first arrived there. Kyn’s boyfriend, Hujack, had also asked her to
come and live with him and his parents. The liberal Garvian culture had space
for that. Kathara’s fiancé was also living with his parents and younger sister
who had her girlfriend lover over frequently. Sarita’s boyfriend invited her to
live together at his brother’s house whose wife was really a man, but looked
like a lovely woman.

   
The girls were thrilled with
all the new concepts they had been introduced to and the freedom they now had.
Dvora willingly released the strong overbearing hold she had on them to delve
into sorcery and learn the art of wizardry and fortune telling. She was
determined to put what she had learned to good practice in her revenge against
Daxu Korth.

   
She returned home late one
night from the nightclub she now owned. She had been using that as her base to
work out of for her clientele. She always left some of the lights on, not to forget
what happened when she got a visit from her former lover Lebag Kralc. The
thoughts of him had long been gone and it was just habit now.

   
Walking into her plush
living room she sits down on her purple velvet sofa and grabs the controller to
turn on the news transmission on her audi-vision.

   
“Hello again,” says a voice
that sends chills up and down Dvora’s spine. The high backed chair swivels
around and she sees Lebag Kralc.

   
“How did you get in here?”
she gasps. “What are you doing here?”

   
“I came to see how you and
our daughters were.” He replied. “From what I gathered they seem to be
adjusting to the society on Garv quite well. Would I be able to say the same
about you?”

   
“I run my businesses. I take
care of myself and the girls too, if they need anything,” she replies. “How did
you know I was here?”

   
“Forget? I’m a spy. I’ve
known you were here for a long while now,” he lights a small cigar and smiles.
“They still don’t know do they?”

   
“They never will. I’ll never
tell them, and don’t you ever tell them either.” Dvora glowers at Lebag.

   
“I don’t think I would. Knowing them, they’d probably demand money from
me and claim their rights to all I possess,” he chuckles, “If they’re anything
like you, that is.
Why
humiliate yourself here on this piece of space rock?
This whole
dang planet is nothing but one...huge...growlery.”
   
“So you still haven’t told me why you’re here,” fumes Dvora.

   
“Business, my dear. Business. I also buy and sell,” he replied.