by Jay Allan
The man was on his feet now, his eyes fixed on the three other soldiers. He was dressed all in black, though the dust from the trail had covered him with a light gray coating. His hair was dark brown, long, pulled back in a ponytail held by a small silver clasp, the only thing of apparent value on his person. “Now get the hell out of here,” he said, “and take this piece of shit with you.” His voice was ominous, the threat of death heavy in every word.
The soldiers were stunned. They had jumped to their feet, and they stood staring at the man…then at their friend, lying at his feet, still in the final stages of his death struggle. The bar was silent, every conversation hushed. Those closest to the door had run out into the street in search of relative safety…or one of General Lucerne’s patrols. The others shied away, moving back against the walls, watching nervously as the scene unfolded.
“Go,” the man said. “Walk away. Live.”
The soldiers glanced back and forth for a few seconds. They were clearly scared, but in the end their rage won out. Almost as one, they reached for the pistols at their sides. They were combat veterans, men who had killed before. They moved rapidly, decisively. But not quickly enough.
The man’s hand dropped down as well, faster. He gripped the well-worn pistol he wore and brought it to bear before his enemies had even gotten theirs free of their holsters. The heavy gun cracked once, twice, a third time, in rapid succession…and the soldiers fell backward, a single red hole dead center on each of their foreheads. The man slipped the gun in its place, and he turned back to the bar.
He looked down, pushing the glass with the cigar to the side. Then he grabbed the bottle and took a deep gulp. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out another imperial coin, tossing it on the bar. “Clean up the mess,” he said with no detectable emotion. He turned and walked toward the door, carrying the half-empty bottle with him as he did.
He’d gotten halfway to the exit when he heard the commotion in the street. He stopped just as a group of uniformed troops poured in, weapons drawn. “Hands in the air,” the leader shouted. “Now!” His voice was tense, but the man could hear the control of a true veteran in the words, a real soldier, not like the bullies in uniform he’d just wasted. Through the layers of apathy and contempt, a small spark of respect flickered.
“I don’t want to hurt you…” The man stood, unmoving, the still warm pistol hanging on one side, and a bronze-colored shortsword sheathed on the other. His eyes darted back and forth assessing his opponents. There were seven of them, and he could tell immediately they were better soldiers than the four thugs he’d just killed. They all had weapons drawn…and leveled at him.
“This is the last warning you’re going to get.” The lead soldier, a lieutenant from his insignia, stared at the man, his eyes focused, ready.
The man could see the soldier’s hands, the whiteness in his fingers as he gripped his weapon tightly. He knew he could win the fight one on one, even two or three to one. But these were good soldiers, he could see that clearly, and there was no way he could take them all down. Not before they killed him.
He felt an urge to fight despite the odds. Death didn’t seem like such a terrible option. Life was a burden anyway, a constant effort to keep moving, to push back the memories, the dark side of himself…usually with the help of a river of alcohol. Yes, he thought, die now…die gun in hand in this filthy saloon in the middle of nowhere. A fitting end to a life so wasted, so ill used. His hand tensed. He was ready to draw.
But something stopped him, something deep inside, as it always did. The indomitable will, the refusal to yield to death. It had saved him many times, even when he hadn’t wanted saving. And there it was again, hardwired into his psyche. The will to survive, by any means necessary. Any means at all.
He cursed silently to himself, feeling the wave of anger at his inability to simply allow himself to die. But even as his mind railed against itself, he felt his arms moving outward, away from his weapons. He stared right back at the officer and simply nodded.
The lieutenant jerked his head toward the man, a signal to his troopers. Two of them ran forward, grabbing the man, reaching down and removing his weapons belt. One of the soldiers handed the pistol and sword to another, and then he grabbed the man’s arms and pulled them behind his back, attaching a set of shackles. He pushed the man forward. “Let’s go.”
The man felt a wave of anger, an urge to strike, to kill the soldier who shoved him. He knew he could…the shackles wouldn’t stop him. But it wasn’t the time. So he moved his leg forward, walked slowly toward the door. He was testing his captors, expecting the soldier to push him harder, to take the bait his defiant shuffling pace offered. But the soldier didn’t touch him. He just said calmly, “Let’s move.”
The man stepped through the door and out into the dusty main street of the town. There was a sparse crowd gathered, looking on cautiously. Trouble at the saloon wasn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence, and Lucerne kept a tight grip on events in West Hill. Most days his soldiers made arrests two or three times, but the majority of those were routine fights and other situations involving too much alcohol. They typically held the prisoners overnight, letting them dry out before releasing them. But this was something else entirely. It seemed different than most fights, even ones with fatal endings. It had been so lopsided, over so quickly, it looked at first glance like an ambush, cold-blooded murder and not a real fight.
The man walked slowly down the street, silently staring ahead. The soldiers led him toward a light transport vehicle, two of them running ahead and opening the rear hatch. The man just continued forward, his eyes darting around, taking constant assessments of the situation. He would go along quietly. No doubt these soldiers would believe whatever cell they locked him in would hold him…but the man thought otherwise. The soldiers were professionals, there was no doubt in his mind about that. But he was equally sure he could break out of whatever jail they put him in. They might be good soldiers, but they were utterly unprepared for someone—something—like him.
He could see the crowd growing larger, hear the background noise of the townspeople speaking to each other. His hearing was vastly superior to human norms, and he could understand much of what they were saying. Word was spreading that this drifter had killed four soldiers, Ghana’s men. That was noteworthy enough as the start of a legend, the stranger who’d bested four adversaries, and all the more enticing because of who the victims were. The people of West Hill still resented the callous rule and atrocities they’d suffered when Ghana had controlled the town…and no one mourned for his dead soldiers. But the situation sparked another kind of gossip, and people were already whispering fearfully, wondering how General Ghana would react, if the killing would endanger the fragile truce.
He turned his head and took one quick look at the crowd. They’re really scared. Did I just restart the petty little war in this backwater? He paused for a second. Then he decided he didn’t give a shit. He looked up and stepped into the transport.
Chapter Two
General Lucerne’s Headquarters
“The Badlands”
Northern Celtiboria
The man sat on the cot. It was a hard metal platform, bolted to the stone wall and covered with a thin foam pad. There was nothing comfortable about the cell, but it was clean and orderly, more so than the man had expected. He’d seen far worse prisons.
He’d sat quietly since they had brought him in the day before, watching, taking note of everything…the bars, the schedule of guards coming in, delivering meals, returning to retrieve the trays. He had a plan, a way to make his escape, one he had calculated offered a considerable chance at success. But he’d held off. There was something about these soldiers, a discipline, a professionalism he’d hardly expected to find in a Warlord’s army on Celtiboria. In truth, he was curious. About the troops…and about their commander. And he found being interested in anything to be a refreshing change from the crushing apathy that ruled his life.
The man had served in armies before, forces with veteran soldiers trained to a sharp edge. But those troops had all had a malevolence he didn’t see here. These soldiers were sharp, capable, and he had no doubt they could unleash a fearful fury on the battlefield…but the casual brutality he’d seen in his own service was nowhere in evidence. They were controlled…and that said something about the man in command.
He was sure these troopers would enjoy the pleasures of a good sack when they took a city. He didn’t think them immune to the customary callings of war. But there was a hint of morality at work in this force, one that had rarely been in evidence elsewhere were he had fought. He wanted to know more about the man who commanded this army. So he didn’t try to escape. He waited to see what happened next.
The air was musty, damp, a coldness coming from the walls despite the adequate heat pouring from the ceiling vent. Like most deserts, the Badlands could be brutally hot during the day, and surprisingly cold at night. And it was early morning still, the heat from the blazing sun still hours from penetrating to the depths of the huge stone building. Lucerne had taken an old castle as his headquarters, a massive fortification he suspected had once been built to protect the very trade routes the general and his adversaries battled over now.
The man wondered about his…host. He’d heard the name in his time on Celtiboria, but little else. Lucerne wasn’t one of the top tier Warlords, he was fairly certain of that, but he’d heard good things about the general, both in terms of his military skill and his temperament. And he suspected total control over the Badlands trade routes would propel him a long way toward the top of the hierarchy, doubling or tripling his resources in an instant.
These soldiers are well-trained. And led. If this Lucerne is able build a larger army of this quality, he could shake up the power struggle for sure.
The man couldn’t help but analyze strategy and tactics, it was hardwired into his brain, and no matter how much effort he made to ignore such things, the response was almost automatic. Even with a conflict that didn’t involve him, an insignificant struggle in the Far Stars. A fight in which he had no stake, no real interest.
The man didn’t know all that much about Celtiboria, only that it was the most populated world in the Far Stars, and that it had once been the most powerful as well, until the republic that governed it collapsed almost three centuries before, ruined by generations of corruption and incompetent leadership. The fall ushered in a period of protracted civil war that still showed no signs of ending. The planet was ruled now by dozens of Warlords, local nobles who styled themselves as generals and raised armies to fight an unending war for planetary hegemony. That struggle had seen its increases and decreases in intensity, but in three hundred years none of the Warlords had achieved the sought after planetary rule…and while they continued to fight, the people suffered, the resources that should have supported Celtiboria’s wealth squandered on hundreds of pointless battlefields.
He’d thought the whole situation to be fitting. The Far Stars was a wild and untamed sector, overrun by pirates and mercenaries, half its worlds relegated to a kind of semi-modern squalor, while others were ruled by an eccentric variety of kings, oligarchies, and religious sects. And then there was Celtiboria, the greatest planet, mired in a centuries-long nightmare that made the bizarre happenings on the fringe worlds look sane by comparison.
He heard a sound, and his head snapped up. His mind cleared itself, shook away any ponderings that might distract him. His eyes were bright, focused, despite the fact that he hadn’t slept in over two days, and while he wasn’t planning any action, his body tensed nevertheless, every muscle ready for battle.
The cell door slid to the side, and an officer entered, with two guards in front of him and four behind. It was a good level of protection, but the man couldn’t help but suppress a bitter laugh. He was sure the grim soldiers were confident in their ability to protect their leader. But he had already analyzed the movement of the forward guards, and he’d catalogued their apparent weaknesses. They were poorly positioned, close enough to each other that he could take them both down with a single compound move. He figured his chance of disabling the two guards and killing the officer, if he so chose, was north of ninety percent. It was a lot less certain he could drop the other four before they took him down, probably right around fifty-fifty. And of course, he was in the middle of a military installation, full of troops who would probably react badly to his killing seven of their comrades. He wouldn’t guess he had no chance at all of an outright escape under such circumstances, but it wasn’t a particularly good one. Of course, all of that only mattered if he was worried about his own survival. And, in truth, he was quite ambivalent about it. He didn’t fear death, and some days he came close to craving it.
Still, he always held back, chose tactics, even desperate battle, over suicide. There was something inside him, some force that made the thought of giving up anathema. He might be tired of living, tormented by the things he’d done and seen. But he knew in his heart he was incapable to yielding, of accepting death willingly. Even allowing himself to be captured was but a tactic, one acceptable because of his confidence in his ability to escape. No, whatever future lay ahead of him, he knew when he died it would be gun and sword in hand, fighting to the last.
Besides, there was something different now, a feeling he hadn’t experienced for years. He was intrigued. The officer, the expression on his face. He seemed different from the others, he had a greater presence. There was something in his eyes, a spark of some kind…and the man was curious to hear what this solider had to say.
The officer nodded, a generic greeting. “I’m not sure ‘welcome’ is the appropriate word for these circumstances,” he said, “but when I heard the story of what you did, I decided I had to meet you myself.” His voice was calm, but there was something there, a quiet authority. The man could tell this officer was accustomed to being obeyed.
“You may not know this, but the penalty for breaking the peace in West Hill, for murdering four soldiers there, is death. By all rights, you should already be on the gallows. Or worse, I should give you to General Ghana and let him do with you as he would, since it was his men you killed.” The officer paused. “That, I can assure you, would be rather more unpleasant than the hangman’s rope.”
The officer stood just inside the cell door, his eyes locked on the man’s, taking his stock of the prisoner. He wore the uniform of a general, and there were three silver stars on each collar.
The man looked up at the figure standing before him. The officer was young—very young for a Warlord—though he suspected the general’s baby face made his age appear less than it truly was. The man’s eyes paused on the three stars on the officer’s collar. He had been on Celtiboria for months now, and while he couldn’t have been less interested in the savage politics that had the planet’s Warlords fighting each other for power, his genetics and training made it hard to ignore what he saw. It was natural for him to acquire information from happenings around him, and he had picked up the basics of the ranking system in his first week planetside.
He’d considered it strange. Celtiboria’s Warlords fought each other with undisguised hatred. Their armies marched across the tortured world, fighting battles, requisitioning the supplies they needed, leaving farmers and townspeople on the brink of starvation. They lied and stole and cheated their way through negotiations and sacrificed honor and trust in their naked grabs for power. They sent assassins after their rivals and fought each other over the smallest disputes. But on one thing they mysteriously agreed. The ancient rank structure of the Celtiborian army was respected, and each Warlord wore a number of stars commensurate with the size of the army he commanded. And only the lord who controlled the ancient planetary capital could style himself Marshal.
The officer’s three stars meant he was a Warlord who commanded at least 75,000 soldiers. That was a considerable achievement for an officer who didn’t look all that much older than the man�
��s own thirty-four years. It had been a long time since the man felt anything but misery and disgust for those he encountered, but there was something about this young general, a strength of character he could sense, despite his tendency to stand behind angry misanthropy, to think the worst of all those he met. In spite of himself, he liked something about this officer.
“Then hang me and be done with it. Or try to, at least.” The man’s voice had an uncommon hint of respect in it, but the last sentence also dripped with undisguised menace.
“I don’t intend to hang you.” The officer looked down at his prisoner, firm, neither provoked nor concerned by the man’s threatening tone. “There is little enough justice on Celtiboria, but one can find it in this camp. At least whatever battered version of it I can provide.”
“Justice?” The man’s voice was thick with mockery. “You believe in justice? It is a useful fiction, I’ll admit, often well-employed in controlling the weak minded masses. But I have no place for fables, for fantasies of fairness and men of wisdom and compassion. I have seen enough of this universe—indeed, more I’d wager, than you have—and I know what it is. Nasty and brutish. I have hatred aplenty for those who make it so, but my pity is reserved for the idealistic, for the believers. For their role is that of prey, the wounded herd animal limping around the watering hole. And worse even for those who follow them, eyes glittering with idealistic dreams as they march to their slaughter.”
The man rarely spoke, and never more than a few words or a sentence to convey his meaning. But there was something about this officer, and he found himself unloading, sharing the grim thoughts he usually kept to himself.
“That is a bleak view…though I understand how one can come to feel that way. Indeed, there is little enough honor on this world, but I wouldn’t say there is none.”