Fars and I had been part of the lower floors for a long time. It was only when we agreed to watch each other’s backs that we decided to move up. We struck a deal with a couple of Mortian hacks and they gave us a comfortable cell on the 52nd floor. Most of the prisoners down there either knew us, knew Fars, or just couldn’t care less that we were there so we walked the hallways without much interference.
When we finally made it to the Nameless’ cell, the Templar was sitting with his back to the door while his roommate, an Orros dwarfed by the Aloi’s size, massaged his giant shoulders. Fars grimaced and shook his head but I gestured for him to be silent. I had seen the Nameless a couple of times before but had never spoken to him for obvious reasons. Without the armor, the Templar was still incredibly impressive in stature.
He was easily a head taller than the Orros which made him bigger than Fars, and definitely bigger than I was. His body looked like it was a thousand years old. His entire back was covered in bruises and scars as if he was flogged daily. His skin had a sickly white-grey color to it and almost every inch of it was covered in tattoos. I had never seen an Aloi with so much character. Too bad most of that character was horrendous.
Harik the Orros tapped the Nameless when he saw us and the Templar turned his head to see who was interrupting his massage. His face was a nightmare. Glowing yellow eyes sat within sunken sockets surrounded by a greyish, leathery skin lined with scars and deformities. It looked like someone put two topaz gems into a rotten man’s face.
He glanced at us for a long moment as his lips curled upward. I had no idea what he was thinking, but before I could even take a guess, he leaned in and whispered something into his maid’s ear and turned back to the wall.
The Orros coughed and finally spoke.
“What do you want?” Harik asked while crossing his hands on his chest. He knew who we were, and neither of us was inferior to his master.
“We want to talk to the Nameless, we have a proposition.”
“About what?” Hikar asked.
“It’s not for your filthy ears, Orros scum,” Fars hissed and leaned into Hikar’s face. The Orros backed away a little. He knew all about Fars—everyone did.
“Threaten all you want, Eres. The Nameless doesn’t care what you want.”
Fars wanted to jump in with another jab of Eres diplomacy, but I stopped him.
“I have a message from Rinslo,” I said while ignoring Hikar and staring at the Aloi’s back. It looked massive from where I stood.
“Then speak,” the Orros said.
A couple of Shia gathered a safe distance from the cell, their prying ears collecting information for their wavemasters. Realizing that half the prison would soon know what this was about, I screamed abuse.
“The Aloi is a race of vermin that needs to be erased from the galaxy!”
Fars looked at me in shock and I braced for the Templar’s reaction. Oh, it came even faster than I thought it would. The Templar finally gave off a sound and it was far from what I had expected. It was laughter. Even Hikar seemed surprised.
“Hikar, piss off,” the Templar said as he got up from the floor.
The Orros begrudgingly accepted his master’s order and moved out of the cell. The Nameless approached the two of us somewhat aggressively. I was ready for anything, but he just moved between the two of us toward the Shia behind us. He plucked one of them before they could escape and broke its neck. The rest of them got the message and scurried away instantly. He turned back to the two of us, walked into his cell, and sat back on the floor. He gestured toward the two of us to follow. I sat down out of a false show of respect, but Fars decided to stand. Mostly because his big body wouldn’t allow for him to stand with ease. The Templar was bigger, but he wasn’t as bulky in certain places.
“Why do two Ka dogs think I won’t kill them for coming to my cell to insult me?”
It was a legitimate question and one I intended to answer.
“You fight in the Sulan Games,” I said, getting straight to the point. “You want to win your freedom as much as all of us, right?” the Nameless said nothing, which was a good start. “Good, then let’s get to the point. Rinslo won’t let us fight in the games unless we do something for him.”
“Fine,” the Nameless replied calmly.
“Fine?” I repeated in confusion.
“I don’t care about the games, Technomancer.”
For a moment I was at a loss for words. Any prisoner who made it to the Sulan Games dreamed of freedom. It was the only way to ever get off this godforsaken hellhole.
“Does your honor mean nothing to you, Aloi?” Fars interjected.
But the Templar immediately snapped back. “No.”
Fars looked like he had seen a ghost. “How can one be without honor? How can one live without a reason?”
“Like this,” the Templar answered calmly.
I could see all kinds of violent ideas on Fars’ face, but I knew he would hold back as long as I told him. I didn’t like this attitude either, though. It was far from what I expected, and it was only now that I understood why the damned warden had asked us to do the negotiating. The only thing worse than an Aloi was an Aloi with shit for a personality.
I had to approach this from a different angle.
“So, what do you want, Templar? You don’t want to reunite with your race, you don’t want to get out of this shithole, then what do you want to do?”
The Templar sighed and cracked his neck calmly. “You can’t give me what I want, human. If this is all, then get out of my cell and call Hirak on your way back.”
“You mean your whore?” Fars hissed. It was strange to see him hissing like a damn cretin, but Fars was an honorable creature to a degree.
“Yes, my Orros whore,” the Templar answered.
Fars looked at me with a can-you-believe-this-guy expression and I bit my lip trying to figure out how to handle this situation.
“What awaits you outside, Richard Stavos?” the Aloi asked to my surprise.
“Freedom, my friends, my family, and my race. Everything.”
It seemed like a completely redundant question.
“A child’s motive.”
“Don’t you have a motive? Don’t you wish to leave this place?”
“I have no wishes.”
All right, he was officially driving me crazy. I never allowed the luxury of thinking this would be easy, but to have to convince a depressed Aloi, which could be compared to a damn concrete wall, to join me in a bodyguard mission was becoming even more ridiculous.
“Richard Stavos, I think we tried enough. We don’t need this wretched creature. You will have to convince the warden of this.”
I ignored Fars and decided to bring out the big guns.
“Do you understand what will happen here? If you don’t accept this mission then neither Fars here nor I can attend the Sulan Games. If we can’t attend the games, we can’t win our freedom. If an Aloi Templar stands between me and my freedom, then trust me, I will remove him from my path as I have done with several of your brethren.”
I readied my nanites for what was about to happen. This was a direct threat, and in Xan, a threat bore a lot of weight for both involved parties.
The Nameless kept staring at me, his gaze cold and dangerous. It lasted for several long seconds, which almost felt like an eternity, but he let out a sigh and spoke.
“What mission?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. He completely ignored the rest of my words, even the point about me killing his kind. I looked at Fars and he just shrugged. I couldn’t help myself.
“Are you not offended by my words?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Life is an offense to the universe.”
“What does that even mean?”
“What is this mission, Technomancer?”
At that point, I didn’t know whether to send a spike down the Templar’s throat, answer the question, or just walk out the do
or and get high on snapp with Fars. I decided to answer the question and told him that the warden wanted us as bodyguards for tomorrow, and that if we declined, he wouldn’t let us fight in the Redemption Tomb. The Templar listened patiently as I explained with a now pissed-off tone.
“So, there it is. That’s what’s going to happen.”
“Fine.”
“Fine what? What is fine?”
“I will come with you tomorrow.”
I turned to Fars and the Eres shrugged again. He was just as confused as I was.
“You will? You will join us then?”
“Go away now. I have thoughts I need to deal with.”
I didn’t want to get into the last sentence. This had turned out way better than expected and I didn’t want to add anything to spoil it.
“All right. The guards will tell us—”
“Yes, go now.”
As we left the cell, Fars kept murmuring insults under his breath. We walked back up to our floor in silence but for his constant murmurs. Just before we arrived at our place, Dormak, one of Vogron’s men, approached us. Dormak was a Jareet, just like Vogron, a race of four-armed hairless gorilla-looking bastards that ruled much of the Partak sector. Apparently, their race had a gruesome past that turned them into very pragmatic and violent beings. Yet, they were also very intelligent, calculating, and even friendly if it benefited them.
Dormak grunted something and finally spoke as we stood there wondering what the hell he wanted from us?
“Two Federation warriors visit an Aloi Templar, they threaten his life and, in the end, all three of them remain alive. What is this riddle, Bloodmancer?”
He leaned on the railing and blocked our path. I saw another Jareet with two Oshamians at the top of the stairs. Backup for if things went south for the lone bastard.
“Move out of our way, Dormak,” I said loud enough for everyone around us to hear. The Jareet just snickered.
“Of course,” he said and took a step back. Just as we moved ahead, he pushed himself in front of us again. This time he was much closer to my face.
“It’s just that Vogron wants to know what you are up to.”
“I will tell him face-to-face if he has the balls to come see me by himself,” I almost yelled at the poor bastard.
Dormak came very close to my face as his eyes turned into slits and his words were barely a whisper. “Now, Stavos. Tell me now.”
I looked around. The prying eyes avoided my gaze. Good, I had established myself. No matter what decision one made in Xan, it was always important to make it look like it was your own. I told Dormak all about our meeting with the Templar and the orders from the Warden. I had nothing to gain from withholding it from Vogron and a lot to lose for playing a tough guy. I knew that Vogron would find a way to exploit my situation but that was unavoidable.
Fars’ hand landed gently on his shoulder and squeezed so hard that I could hear a bone snap. The Jareet used all four hands to pry the Eres’ fist open and stepped back, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.
“We’ll speak again, Bloodmancer!”
At the end of the day, Fars, Mitto, and I actually celebrated with a bottle of Mortian sort-of-whiskey that we snatched from the hacks. Fars was loaded on snaeetpp, as usual, and I let Mitto feast on the electromagnetism that radiated from fast-moving nanites.
“This is good stuff for Mitto,” the little bugger said. He had come to sound more like a human in my mind as he picked up on my mannerisms and words. Since Fars was hallucinating in the corner, and I had a couple of drinks, my conversation partner was already picked.
“Mitto are you the only one of your kind?”
“No, the doctors made a bunch of Mitto’s. They made us to control ship computers, merge with the AI, and control weapon systems.”
“So how come none of your race ended up here? What’s wrong with you in particular?”
“Mitto took a Gerth battlecruiser. She is called Fimmo and she is all mine!”
“What?” I snapped. “What the hell are you saying?”
“The Gerth send Fimmo into battle. Fimmo could have been hurt. Mitto took Fimmo away from the battle.”
“You fell in love with a battlecruiser’s AI?”
Suddenly Fars woke up and, though pretty wasted, joined the conversation.
“Love is good,” he said, probably having no damn clue what we were talking about. He was like that most of the time when on snapp. He heard a single word or sentence and then just started babbling on and on about it.
“What happened to your battlecruiser?”
“They tore Mitto from Fimmo!”
“Shit, Mitto, I didn’t know you were such a romantic,” I said and almost regretted it. I knew nothing about the parasite, and this was the perfect opportunity.
“Don’t joke about love, Richard Stavos.”
“Oh, now you’re suddenly defending Mitto here.”
“Even the weakest can love, but because they are weak, their love is weak too.”
“I don’t know, a battlecruiser doesn’t sound weak to me.”
“That is just armor. When you remove the battlecruiser, you have Mitto, nothing more than a puddle. When you remove my armor, you still have a warrior that can crush a thousand enemies.”
“Mitto, I want you to come with us tomorrow. Keep an eye out for what’s going on. I’ll let you into the INAS, all right?”
“Mitto does as the boss says.”
“Don’t—ahh, forget it.”
“You want the puddle to come tomorrow?” Fars said with a straight face.
“Yes, an Eres, an Aloi, a human, and a puddle walk into a bar and—yeah, let’s just see where that leaves us at the end of the day.”jr
4
I hadn't seen the outside of Xan for five long years, and the moment we traveled out of orbit in the warden’s private ship, I got a serious case of let’s-get-the-hell-out-of-here.
Rinslo had told us very little about the mission. All we knew was that he would meet with some people and we were supposed to sit in the background and do nothing but protect his life. I was fine enough with it, but the less we had to work with meant that the danger level was all the greater.
The warden’s ship docked with a Jareet cruiser two hours after he initiated sub-light travel and the four of us walked into the dark halls of the Jareet ship. Mitto connected to my INAS, so there were practically five of us when it came to separate minds, but nobody had to know I brought the little goo assistant.
A Jareet officer met us and greeted Rinslo with a weird bow while he flapped his four arms as if he was trying to fly. It looked ridiculous but so did everything else most races did. At least to someone as serious as me. I wasn’t big on ridiculous theatrics.
Rinslo turned around and graced us with a deadly serious expression. “Stay back, don’t say a word, and try to look sophisticated. Just imagine you’d been doing this every day for the last five years, all right?”
He was pretty nervous, and that made me very nervous. From what I had gathered, this was a deal where he should have been on equal footing, but seeing him squirm, I wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Don’t worry, sir. We’re right here. Nothing short of an army can ever hope to hurt you with us around.”
He grunted something under his breath but visibly relaxed. His anxiety wasn’t coming from the fear of us failing this banal task, no, it stemmed from something far more sinister that I felt through Mitto’s link with me. There was something on this ship, but we had no idea what it was. They always talked about empaths in the army and how some races could feel danger and projected emotions. I guessed Mitto was one of them to a degree.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered to my parasitic new friend.
“I don’t know. It’s—there’s an area I can’t scan, and it’s making me nervous.”
“What are you standing around for?” the warden hissed as I stood there off to the side.
“I was just checking something with m
y nanites, Warden. Don’t worry.”
He turned back around and stormed off. We followed in line.
The insides of a Jareet ship looked exactly like you’d imagine. The hallways were just large enough for Jareet to pass through, nothing fancy like those gargantuan Imminy corridors aboard transport arcs. The entirety of their insides was metallic black and grey with the occasional Jareet art piece hanging on the walls. They tended to be so grotesque they only added to the general discomfort.
The Nameless stopped in front of a particularly nasty-looking artwork and stared at it. The warden noticed him but remained silent, not wanting to get on his bad side. The Aloi stared at it for what felt like ages. No one said anything as he stood there, still like a statue. And just like that, he resumed walking.
I let out a sigh and shook my head. It was a strange thing to see such a creature enjoy art, especially after having learned about how the Aloi were the enemies of all life and stuff. The dull, depressive pragmatism of Jareet culture perfectly suited the dull, depressive pragmatism of the Aloi Templar, I guessed. Maybe that’s why he felt at home here?
“Can life be truly so empty,” Fars asked as we walked toward our destination. Rinslo tried to shut him up, but the Jareet officer said that most races thought this way about Jareet culture and that it didn’t surprise him the least.
“Every culture is strange and unique in its own way,” I added, trying to be diplomatic.
“Jareet culture is mostly functional,” the officer said. “It isn’t unique and very interesting. It isn’t fancy or even pretty for that matter. We shun such frivolities. Functionality is all a Jareet needs.”
After that comment, nobody said a thing until we finally hit the meeting room. Rinslo turned around one last time before we entered, and I gave him a comforting wink. He was stressed out beyond belief, and to be honest, he made me just as nervous. I just hoped he wouldn’t mess something up here as a ship full of Jareet isn’t something the three of us could handle.
Jareet were extraordinary fighters and strategists outshining most Aloi and Federation races in almost every aspect. Their only weakness was their number. They had barely spread across some twenty systems in the last centuries. Part of that problem was, of course, the Greth Dominion, which had established itself as the ruling species of the Partak Sector. Informally, no race dared to call the Partak Sector their own. There were too many races, factions, gangs, cults, pirates, and other criminals who constantly fought for supremacy.
Redeemer: A Military Space Opera Series (War Undying Book 2) Page 4