Redeemer: A Military Space Opera Series (War Undying Book 2)

by N. D. Redding

  “Fine, Richard Stavos. Once again you convince me with your pretty human words. I will do as you say. May the craters of Eres Prime forgive me.”

  “There won’t be anything to forgive, Fars. I promise you, my friend. Especially if we meet the Eres who bestowed his friendship to me.”

  He nodded slowly and looked up at the ceiling, probably lost in his thoughts about a possible future. Good, at least I got him off my back for the time being, and not a moment too soon. I needed some damn rest, and this tiny arm itched like a bitch!

  7

  Almost half an hour passed since the legendary Chief Rockstrong of the Orros and Fars of the dry humor started fighting it out in the arena. If I had to be honest, it was hard to tell who would have the upper hand in the end. My coin would always be on Fars, but at least half the audience thought differently.

  I watched from behind the bars of one of the entrance corridors as their battle unfolded. They swung at each other with weapons until the weapons broke. Then they hammered each other with fists and kicks that would create a fine paste of the average human. The difference in power between a nanite-infused Eres and a human was the difference between a battleship and a kayak.

  My whole body was still sore from my fight in the morning against my latest opponent. It was the fourth of five rounds of the Sulan Games and it turned out to be the easiest one. Compared to how I looked after the fight with the Filadron, I was now positively chipper.

  I had fought Vogron’s champion and it disappointed me to a point where I doubted the legality of the fight. His name was Marnek and he was a well-known Jareet in Xan. Marnek was stronger than the average Jareet, which meant that he could hit like a truck, but he was so incredibly slow that not a single attack even scraped me.

  I tore the Jareet to pieces, limb by limb. I made it look hard, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t put my finger on whether Vogron or the warden was responsible for Marnek’s lackluster performance, but I didn’t really care. They both had equally good reasons to handicap Marnek and make my life easier. I was just happy I didn’t have to regrow any body parts this time. Fars would have been furious if he had watched the fight, but he wouldn’t know what had happened unless I told him myself.

  They let me watch the semi-finals because I was already locked in for the finals. The fight between Rockstrong and Fars would decide my challenger, though. It wasn’t easy to cheer for Fars considering I had to fight him in the finals if he won. The very idea of fighting a friend appalled me and I noticed I was growing more anxious as the possibility approached. Fars didn’t mind this. Eres fought each other over many different points, arguments, political discourse, or just fun; both the killing of a friend and dying by one’s hand were considered honorable.

  Rockstrong brought Fars to the ground and tried to choke him out. Pointless as an Eres could go for half an hour without air. Eres Prime had a very thin atmosphere, especially outside the crater where Eres civilization evolved. Choking an Eres warrior must have been one of the dumbest things one could attempt in a fight.

  Rockstrong was a smart fighter, but like the rest of his race, he shunned education. He was skillful, strong, quick, and he quickly learned how to defend against Fars’ relentless attacks, but Rockstrong never considered going into a library. Cunning beat force most of the time.

  It took Fars all of his strength to get out of the clinch, grab Rockstrong by the arm, twist violently, and then break it. It didn’t take long after that to finish the Orros war chief to a thunderous uproar.

  He was beaming with pride when he returned to our cell where I’d been waiting for him.

  “Is this not the greatest of moments? Two friends locked in the final fight with enough honor for both! What a day!”

  He was shaking his head and opening a package of snapp without even having washed the blood of the Orros from his hands. At this point, Fars knew what I wanted to do regarding the finals, but he played dumb. I didn’t want to spoil the celebration for him this time. The finals were in a week and there was enough time to discuss and prepare all the things that were stewing in my head for a while.

  “Yeah, it was a great battle, my friend,” I replied excitedly. He knew I was faking it even if his head was probably a step closer to being mush, but he just nodded.

  A group of four Jareet appeared before our cell before we could exchange another word, and I honestly thought the celebration would be short-lived. Instead of making a fuss about me slaying their kind, they congratulated me, albeit weirdly by thanking me for ridding them of weak genes. I was pleasantly surprised and accepted the congratulatory garmak meat they brought as gifts.

  Soon after they left, more prisoners knocked on the cell bringing gifts of mostly food but also drugs, Korbian cigars, which were very deadly to humans, but Fars enjoyed one, and even a Takkari slave which I recognized from the time I picked up Mitto.

  The Greth made him a slave the very first day he arrived. He was shaken, beaten, and terrified. Back in the day, I would empathize with the creature, but after everything I had seen and been through in Xan, I just couldn’t care about another tortured soul.

  We accepted the gift because refusing it would have been a sign of disrespect and told the Takkari, whose name was Giran, to take a walk around the prison so we didn’t have to look at his sad face.

  The next day, however, I wanted to get things back on track, so I told Fars to follow me down to the Nameless’ cell. Cheers and applause followed us through all floors but the last few. This wasn’t perfect since the entire prison was watching our every move. The Nameless was as hospitable as always. He had let his Orros whore talk for him again, but I moved the broken brute out of the way without answering and addressed him directly.

  “We need to talk. Right now.”

  “The slayers of Marnek and Rockstrong. You must be very proud,” the Nameless said as he let out a deep sigh. The jab was expected. The Nameless probably knew that I was partly to blame for him getting thrown out of the competition.

  “I need to talk to the both of you and I need to do it away from prying ears so here’s probably the best spot; I’ll keep it brief. The warden wants us on his mission before the finals begin in six days. He’s going to take over that frigate the Frey and Aloi sent him, and I don’t think he expects any problems since both Fars and I are locked for the finals.”

  “A scheme,” the Nameless said curiously. “I can taste it in your voice,”

  “Yes, a scheme, Templar. One I will let you be privy to only because I need you.”

  “I thought it was because you liked me and my great sense of humor,” the Templar said flatly.

  “Watch your mouth!” Fars snapped, and I just put my hand up to stop him.

  The Aloi sighed and shrugged. “Vogron wants the whole delegation dead. Kabish wants Vogron dead, they are both capable of killing all three of us if we don’t give them what they want.”

  “So, you want to take Rinslo’s new ship and piss off the entire sector in one fell swoop?”

  The Nameless was on point. That was exactly what I wanted to do. It hit me how transparent my plan was immediately, but it was the only thing we could do.

  “They will prepare for that possibility.”

  “They will prepare but they won’t prepare well enough,” I replied calmly.

  “I see. And the Eres? He isn’t upset that you swipe the title fight from under his feet? Won’t he cry about his honor and all that?”

  Fars’ face grew bitter after hearing the Aloi’s words.

  “You take that back!” Fars snapped.

  “Pardon me, Eres. I have a knack for pissing people off. It’s not you, it’s just how I am.”

  “What you are,” Fars just repeated.

  “And so, we kill the crew, we take the ship, and we have the Partak Sector on our tail, and the entire Aloi Hegemony as a bonus. What then, Technomancer?”

  “We reach Federation space.” Fars was shuffling from one foot to the other. He didn’t ask these ques
tions but the more holes the Nameless prodded into my plan the more uncomfortable with it he grew.

  “I see. So, you bring an Aloi Templar into the Federation. What do the Imminy bastards do with me?”

  “We can find a way to return you to the Hegemony. Smuggle you onboard a—”

  “No,” the Nameless said loudly and suddenly. Then as if he was surprised by his reaction, he quickly changed his tone as if nothing happened. I didn’t want to get into it, but it certainly kindled my imagination. An Aloi Templar who doesn’t want to return to the Hegemony but doesn’t mind sitting on a prison planet for centuries.

  “Fine, whatever you want then. As soon as we lose our tail you can go wherever an Aloi Templar would go if he wasn’t part of the Hegemony.”

  I finished the sentence more like a question than a statement.

  “I’ll do as you want, but I have one request.”

  “Of course, yes. Shoot!”

  “When and if we manage to hijack that ship and before we leave the star system, we have to make one stop in the Qebia asteroid belt that surrounds it. Do you agree?”

  “Stop? What kind of stop? What will we do there?”

  “There’s a… package that I need to pick up before I can leave the system and you don’t get to ask me what it is or why I need it. Without it, it’s a no-go.”

  I looked at Fars who stood mostly silent with his hands crossed, probably trying to push down the fact he doesn’t get to fight in the finals. He just shrugged and looked away. Sometimes, when Fars wasn’t going to get what he wanted he would go into silent mode and just angrily agree with everything I did. The man was older than me by a hundred years and still behaved like a human teenager sometimes.

  “All right, we get that package whatever it is. But do you realize that it puts us at great risk? And I want your word that you won’t try to harm us and take the ship for yourself.”

  “It’s my only request, and I promise on my honor that I won’t backstab you. If I do it, I’ll do it to your face,” he said. I shrugged and eventually nodded. I hadn’t had the slightest clue what this was about and wondered whether he hid a ship in the asteroid belt and planned on boarding it. That was the only thing I could come up with that sounded reasonable.

  “Oh, would you be so kind to call back my Orros whore on your way out, Fars?” the Templar asked with a slight grin on his sunken, grey face.

  Fars just grunted and turned away. We sent the poor Orros back to the Templar’s cell, and just before we left the floor, we heard a scream, a loud thump, and Orros bones crack.

  “He’s burning his bridges,” I said while taking in a deep breath.

  “He’s a soulless monster,” Fars added, and he was partly right.

  He was a monster, but I doubted he was soulless. The Nameless, I felt, had to care for something, we all did, but then again what did I know of Aloi principles and morale?

  I dressed for the arena that evening. I had my chest piece, my vambraces, greaves, shoulder guard, and my Ro Sword tucked into my bloodstream. I had Mitto directly linked to my INAS, and I had a big question mark above my head as I watched Fars pack his things.

  He was silent and angry for two days now and I wondered if something was going through his head that could impact our mission. I knew that he would have preferred to be in the finals. He’d rather be king in hell than anything less elsewhere. I pushed these thoughts away and focused on the mission. Fars was loyal; he was Eres. There was nothing to worry about.

  Rinslo kept talking throughout the two-hour flight to the meeting point. Apparently, a Greth carrier was hiding the Frey prototype ship in its belly. I was interested to see the insides of a Greth ship almost more than in the ship we were stealing. They were a technologically very advanced race and I wondered how hard it would be to interface with their ships’ computers. Mitto brought up some schematics and I studied them as we approached.

  Rinslo couldn’t stop showing his excitement. He was about to be gifted one of the most powerful ships in the galaxy and with it would conclude years of negotiations. Nothing else was more important, and nothing would stop him. Or at least so he thought.

  He wore stupidly extravagant clothes and jewelry. If I could compare him with anything from earth it would be one of those dancers from a carnival complete with brightly colored thongs. It took all my mental strength not to burst out laughing when I saw him striding like a peacock.

  As we approached the meeting point, all four of us were left virtually breathless. Through the artificial window of our small ship, we watched as a magnificent sight came into view. The meeting point wasn’t a Greth carrier but something far more technologically wonderful: a Frey Lifewomb. The gargantuan ship, if you could even call it that, was the size of an asteroid. The main body of the ship was tubular and ridden with dozens of transparent domes, each the size of a city.

  Mitto immediately commented on how utterly insane it would be to try and get out of gun range from a Frey Lifewomb ship and he was right. The firepower of a Lifewomb was equal to that of a smaller fleet of Federation or Aloi ships.

  “Yes,” I told Mitto over the INAS so that Rinslo wouldn’t suspect anything. “It is a problem. Yes, well we will find a way around it as we go. I know that’s not… No, Mitto, I know that’s not a plan, it’s called improvising. It’s a test of intelligence.”

  “A beauty, such a thing,” Rinslo said, mesmerized by the view. “Imagine such technology in the hands of a Takkari. The galaxy would be ours,” he said meditatively.

  “It’s in the hands of the Frey and it still does little good,” I said.

  “The Frey have no ambition. They’re cowards. They use these ships so they don’t have to commit to anything, not even a planet for their people.”

  Out of all of us, it was the strangest thing to see the Nameless throw in a bone of his own.

  “Perhaps their past taught them something we should all consider.”

  There was a silence for several long seconds since nobody expected him to talk, and by the look on his face, neither did he.

  “Perhaps, perhaps—” Rinslo murmured staring out the window and probably imagining himself on a mountain of wealth, females, and slaves.

  When our ship docked with the Lifewomb and the hatch opened, a whole procession was awaiting the warden. He was welcomed like a hero on the Frey Lifewomb with dozens of individuals applauding as he stepped on the white surface of the ship. They were all dressed up in weird clothing that changed shape and color every other second. There were Greth, Jareet, Frey, Vakaz, and many other races aboard, but not a single Aloi could be seen. I expected to see at least some, but apparently the Frey did all the talking for their alliance and the Aloi all the killing.

  We stepped out of the small hatch one by one, and when the Nameless set his foot on the Lifewomb, the Frey locked their eyes on him and just stood there frozen in place. The rest of the welcoming committee did the same several seconds later. Almost in unison, the Frey dropped to their knees in front of the Nameless, and the Templar, with a devilish smirk on his face, enjoyed every single second of it.

  “No, friends, you don’t have to bow. This isn’t a Templar of the Aloi anymore, he’s my prisoner.”

  As Rinslo said those words you could see utter horror in the Frey’s eyes. The last time we met with the Frey, there was a suspicious exchange of glances between the Frey commander and the Nameless which bothered me even now. Yet, the commander had been worried about other, more pressing issues, so he stuck to the protocol and ignored the Nameless. These Frey, however, had no idea how to handle this situation, and they just did what they would always do when a Templar showed up: obey.

  It took some convincing on Rinslo’s side for the Frey to get back up on their feet. They did, sure, but the dismay was still on their faces. It felt as if they were still waiting for the Nameless to give them orders. The Nameless was endlessly amused by this whole thing and he couldn’t remove the grin from his face even after I warned him.

 
; The dock of the ship was like any other carrier ship. It was large, no doubt about it, but there were space stations that sported docks large enough for several battleships to land. What amazed me, however, was the number of ornaments on every wall and door. This ship was old, so old in fact that the population of it had enough time to decorate every inch of the ship. The entire interior was an art gallery. Incredibly complex statues stood on every corner, paintings of genius quality hung on almost every single wall, and the doors themselves seemed to be each different and richer in design and texture than the last. Even the smell was art. There were traces of roses and chocolate. I couldn’t even imagine how they got those smells.

  We walked after the warden and the procession, taking it all in. He glanced over his shoulder and saw me inhale several times. It must have been the reason for his explanation.

  “The smell depends on who inhales,” the Frey officer said. “The system in place recognizes your preferences and designs smells just for your nose.”

  I bowed slightly and said my thanks.

  “I appreciate your kind explanation.”

  I honestly did. It was just insane what other alien species poured wealth into creating. Some were all into becoming a giant war machine, while others had learned to appreciate the finer things in life.

  When the music began playing and I distinctly recognized the sound of a piano, the explanation was the same yet again: every individual heard what they liked to hear.

  As soon as Rinslo entered a conference room and we were left outside to wait, I had to ask the Nameless something that had been bothering me.

  “How is it that a race as advanced as the Frey wants to collude with your brutish gang?”

  The Nameless snickered at the question and shrugged. “We have more in common than you think. Much more.”