Aeona: The Blade of Time
Compendium 2020 – story 30
By Andrew Hawnt
Please prepare yourself to be executed by the one and only Tia Vardis, the galaxy's most iconic hunter! Your imminent death will be streamed live across the entire quadrant, so please no cowering, crying or begging for your life until the cameras are there with you. This is a message on behalf of the Vardis Broadcasting Corporation. Terms and conditions apply. In the event of your sudden and brutal death, any royalties that would have been accrued by your appearance on the network revert to Tia. Enjoy your demise.
Aeona rolled her eyes, which felt weird as one was beneath a black eyepatch after she had received a glancing blow from a crystal dagger during a brief misadventure on the floating island of Terondis. The message had popped up as a noisy holomail, blocking her view of her own screen, right in the middle of her Saturday morning cartoon binge. From her heavy, industrial seat at the time ship Winnifred's helm, Aeona brought up data regarding the invasive transmission she had received. She had been travelling through the Chronodream, the space between times, heading for a little planet named Morian that did the best chicken wings in the universe, as their chickens were all eight feet tall. The message from the Vardis corporation was written in temporal code, which had enabled it to find her no matter where she was.
Someone was spending a lot of money to get in touch with Aeona. “Should I feel flattered? I should probably feel flattered.”
She flipped her top hat off the corner of her seat and it landed perfectly on her head, her oversized goggles peering over the brim of it as though wanting to watch cartoons as well. Thumbing controls on the arm rests of the chair, she looked to the display in front of her again. The holographic screen was housed in a golden picture frame that hung in the air before her, supported by cables and improvised tech, and as the cartoon was replaced by data feeds, Aeona's trademark smirk vanished.
By the time she realised Tia was already on board, the assassin's blade was already at her throat.
“Make sure any famous last words are memorable,” said the intruder. “I get more views that way.”
In one fluid movement, Aeona smacked the emergency control on her left gauntlet and twisted to one side. This triggered a cog-shaped portal to erupt right where she was sat, the spinning light of it instantly swallowing her. The instant it closed, the portal reopened behind Tia and Aeona was able to take advantage of the sudden surprise and shove her hard against the chair. Tia crashed against it, but was back up in a moment, swinging the sleek sword this way and that in front of Aeona.
Above her span two small and impossible sleek recording drones, which were broadcasting a full 3D rendering of the whole scene live across the stars. She stuck a middle finger up at their camera lenses and dashed for the corridor that linked the bridge to the rest of her self-built ship. Tia gave chase, but as she arrived at the corridor, Aeona slapped a control on the hull and a thick security door slammed down.
Tia glanced to her drones and flashed a very expensively maintained smile at them. She winked and flicked a control on the hilt of her sword. Its metal blade began to crackle and glow, which caused light to reflect against Tia's silver bodysuit and dance around the shoddily-lit bridge. She checked the drones were focusing on hr before she thrust the blade into the door itself. A circle of molten metal began to glow around the blade and Tia drew it up, around and back, quickly cutting an oval shape. She kicked it and the shape collapsed through, thudding onto the iron floor of the corridor beyond.
She stepped through and thumbed the powered blade off. The drones moved around her as she stepped down the corridor, eager to get every angle possible. She smiled. The viewing figures always went up when the prey tried to give her the slip.
“She can't get far, my friends,” Tia said to the viewers that were watching via the drones. “On a ship this size, there aren't many places to hide. Now, do you know who she is?”
Tia paused for effect, looking carefully around a corner as she did so. She stepped on. “The prey on tonight's episode is called Aeona Gardinier, and tonight's sponsor tells me that she is a fugitive, wanted in several systems by very powerful people. Some call her a hero. A freedom fighter. Others call her a terrorist. Whatever she is, she is tonight's prey and I won't let our benevolent sponsor down. She's a troublemaker who can travel in time. There are rumours that she even destroyed her own masters in order to have the freedom to cause trouble anywhere in the past, present and future, anywhere in the universe. She's quite a prize!”
A noise up ahead. Movement. She gripped the sword tighter.
“I hope you all have your subscriptions up to date, because you don't want to miss seeing me take the head of this notorious fugitive right off her shoulders!”
“This is your captain speaking,” said Aeona from speakers in the ceiling of the corridor. “I don't like people who teleport themselves onto my super-secret home-made time ship in order to make themselves look tough on a stream. Killing isn't sport. It's killing. The daft bint with the capped teeth, fake hair and an ego inflated as much as her cleavage is requested to join me, the notorious fugitive Aeona, who incidentally has way better style, in the rear bay of the ship. Let's give the viewers what they want.”
Tia grinned excitedly and stomped through the ship, soon locating the rear bay, which clearly served as everything from a loading and landing area to a workshop and entertainment space, judging by the tools, benches, basketball hoop and ancient video games cabinet stood against one side of the hull. On the workbench were various strange devices that had been jumbled together from random bits of tech, and beside them stood an umbrella rack full of swords.
Aeona was in the middle of the bay, a rapier raised before her. Coupled with her current addition of an eye patch, she looked like a kid in cosplay at Halloween.
“Hello buggerlugs,” Aeona snarled. “Who paid you to come here and be stupid on camera? I hope you know I take invasions like this really pretty bloody seriously, what with me being a dangerous fugitive and all.”
“I love love LOVE your banter, Aeona,” said Tia, brandishing her own, clearly far superior, sword. “The whole Steampunk chic thing is a bit dated though now, I must say. Everyone wants sleek and shiny, like me, rather than cheeky and wearing cogs on your hat. The sponsor wants this over quickly, and the viewers are wanting their show. Are you ready?”
Aeona grinned. “Actually I'm just pissed off and unpredictable. I say that because I don't usually know what I'm doing and just bumble around until the explosions go off.”
Tia raised an eyebrow. “Explosions?”
Right on cue, the stun charges hastily set by the door detonated in a blast of light and noise. Tia staggered aside, dazed, and Aeona went straight in on the attack. Tia, even slowed by the stun blasts, was quick enough to block Aeona's initial thrusts, which bought her enough time to balance herself and launch her own attacks.
Their blades clashed again and again as they danced around the bay, jumping onto the workbench and off, spinning and lunching and jabbing at their opponent. The drones whizzed around them, capturing every stroke and swing.
Aeona gasped for air. She looked down.
Tia's blade had pierced her shoulder, and she could feel it sticking right out of her skin and through the fabric of her grey shirt. Blood welled around the weapon, a crimson stain quickly spreading as Tia yanked it back out, Aeona yelling in pain at the feeling of the steel coming back through her. She dropped her own weapon, clamping her hand over the wound. She stared at Tia's blade, which was slick with the time traveller's blood.
Tia stood back, gloating, enjoying the look of Aeona's pain as it spread over her face. She was sad that it only seemed to last for a moment before Aeona's expression darkened.
“Tell me who sent you and why. Now. Right in front of your viewers. Give me that much before you kill me. I... beg you.”
Tia's smile cracked wider when she heard Aeona beg. She glanced at the eager drones, then back to Aeona. “I was sent to you by the sponsor, who said you had to be removed from the timestream by dying. They want you very dead.”
“Who?”
“I don't know. The sponsor supplied a bio-key to seal the deal. No names, nothing. Just a DNA sample to verify the movement of funds once I produce your corpse.”
Aeona grimaced, partly from the pain and partly from annoyance. “Listen, dickhead, I've annoyed a lot of powerful people during my time. That's sort of my thing. I get on the wrong side of bad guys and then for some reason they want me dead. Prats. I mean, by this point in my life I've got it in my veins. Pure, undiluted timestream energy directly from the Chronodream itself. People like to try and take me for studies, or to be exploited, or dissected, or whatever. Someone wants what I can do. Who is it?”
Tia sighed and raised her weapon, ready to strike across Aeona's throat. “Enough of this. I, Tia Vardis, in the name of the sponsor and the worlds watching, sentence you to death.“
Tia lunged at the wounded Aeona, and as she did, she noticed that Aeona wasn't holding her wound. She was manipulating her gauntlet.
The air escaped Tia's lungs as a wet blade slammed through her internal organs from a sideways angle, skewering her innards as though she was being prepared for a barbecue. The star tried to reach closer, but even with her sword she was just far enough away not to cause Aeona any more hassle.
Tia winced, looking down at the blade that had entered her. Half a sword hung in the air, its other half hidden by a cog shaped portal that fizzed and crackled with energy. She coughed twice before looking down at the blood beginning to turn her smart outfit into a nightmare of gore.
“My blood is partially made of time,” Aeona said, checking her wound. “That's why people want to take me to bits. They want what's in my veins so they can somehow turn it to weapons. Believe me, people have tried on so many occasions that I can't even remember. My shoulder hurts, by the way.”
Tia thrust again, then realised that the sword before her had no blade. She pulled it back and screamed as blood and meat emerged from the gigantic wound on her stomach. She looked at the cog portal from which her own blade had stabbed into her.
“Chronodream side effect,” said Aeona. “Even my blood can travel in time and space.”
Tia collapsed, unconscious. Aeona dragged her one-handed to the sole escape pod that she had built on the ship. After all, as its sole occupant, she would only ever need one pod. She hoisted Tia into the pod. Aeona fumbled with its controls and a small medical array slid out of the side of the pod's interior and began treating her wound.
She slid a hand into a utility pouch on the side of Tia's spectacular TV outfit and pulled out a bio-key with her name etched into its metal surface. Aeona looked to the drones.
“Go on, you daft bollocks, get in there too. Show everyone what you witnessed here. Get in the pod. Now.”
The droids did so, and Aeona sealed the lid. She worked the controls for a moment and the back ramp slid open, revealing the madness outside, Winnifred's interior held in place by a force shield at the rear of the ship.
The pod vanished into the chaos beyond times. Aeona knew Tia would eventually find her right time and place. She closed the bay doors. Her attention moved to the key. She took it to the side of her throne, where devices chirruped and chirped
Aeona added the key to the reader on the monitor that hung in a golden picture frame.
Aeona's eyes went wide. She checked the DNA on the reader again.
“This came from me, ten years from now.”
The words echoed throughout Winnifred's interior. The bio sample didn't lie. An older Aeona had sent Tia from the future to assassinate herself in the past.
Aeona pondered the repercussions that could follow. An older self killing the younger self would remove their younger body from existence, thus leaving a void and potentially a paradox.
There had to be a reason.
She listened to the hum of the engines beneath her. Engines that she had built.
As one adventure ends, something far more malevolent was often waiting in the wings.
“Winnifred, please locate the origin of this 'sponsor' wherever and whenever they are.”
Once she had dressed her wound, Aeona sat back in the chair with her book and waited for the course to be set.
I'm coming for you, she thought quietly as her ship began its journey.
==
About Compendium 2020:
Compendium 2020 is a project from author Andrew Hawnt that consists of 52 original short stories, flash fiction stories and vignettes given away for FREE in 2020. Featuring science fiction, fantasy, horror and more, this began as a personal quest and due to the weirdness of 2020 has become an ambition to provide free distractions for anyone who needs them.
About Andrew Hawnt:
Andrew is based in Nottingham, England. Known for his music journalism career, comics writing and film critique work, Andrew is a prolific writer and is the author of a growing stack of books, including the cult hit VHS Ate My Brain. He made the movies The Demon And I and The Demon And I: Birthrite completely in lockdown with cast members filming their scenes remotely, and new films are coming.
Andrew is also the creator and presenter of the YouTube shows Planet Hex and Turn One Shock as well as the video versions of the Compendium stories.
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© Andrew Hawnt 2020
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