This took Ryze aback. “Don’t thank me,” he laughed. “I mean, we did hijack your ship and smacked you around a bit. I’m sorry about that.”
“But you didn’t kill me. If the roles were reversed, I don’t…I don’t think we’d have the same results. I’d be expected to—”
“Yeah, I get it. Peer pressure’s a hell of a thing.” Ryze patted the navigator on the back. “It’s in the rearview for you now, man. You got another chance. Don’t waste it.”
They were at the pod now. He undid the navigator’s binds. “Should be a suit in there, you know…so you don’t have to enter Warkaes in your underwear.”
The navigator chuckled. “Yeah, that’d be a story.”
Ryze nodded his head toward the pod. “Go on, get out of here before I change my mind and feed you to the Atorga.” He may have been having a rare moment of kindness, but that didn’t mean he had to lose all his usual intimidation. I’m not a total marshmallow—not yet, at least.
The navigator nodded and began to enter the pod.
“Oh, hey, wait a sec,” Ryze said.
The navigator turned around. “Yeah?”
“Even though it was never for me, I wanna say good luck with your marriage. Hope it works out.”
The way the man’s face lit up said it certainly would. They were in love, and love prevailed over all, right? He disappeared inside of the pod and closed the hatch. Visible in the small window, the man raised a hand.
Ryze raised his in return, then pulled the release lever. The pod dropped into the launch tunnel with a loud metallic screech, but the engine’s roar was muffled as it left the transport vessel.
“How sweet, sir,” Spex said.
“Shut up, Spex.” Then Ryze turned the comm off completely. As he walked back to the bridge, he was thinking: It’s what Jade and Wylow would’ve done. They’d be proud of me…probably.
Twenty-Two
The first thing the pirate named Gnar did when he landed on Storm was get a drink. He needed it badly. The drugs on his ship, a three-man Claw vessel that somehow fit seven, were expired, only dulling the pain instead of eradicating it completely.
The planet Storm wasn’t his first choice, but it was the closest from the space station he and his comrades had tried and failed to rob. He couldn’t make it much longer in his condition. Besides, those idiots wouldn’t chase him.
The Gray entered the bar still covered in blood. Shrapnel had embedded in his right arm, and third-degree burns covered his left.
Yeah, he needed a drink.
The place—he didn’t even catch its name—was like every other hole in the wall in the galaxy. Dingy, dim, and stinking of booze. The pirate looked around the crowd and saw the same faces, too—people with things to hide and stories to tell. Bad people, like him.
In the far corner of the room, a band played their instruments. Gnar didn’t like it. He just wanted some peace and quiet, but the longing for something to numb the pain overtook that longing for quiet.
He moved through the crowd, a dark stick-figure in shadows, and took a stool near the end of the bar. He put one large hand up, sticky with blood, and waved the bartender over. She was a cute green gal, full lips and full hips. He’d certainly seen better days, yeah, but that wouldn’t stop him from turning on the charm.
“Hey baby, how you doing?”
“Good,” the bartender said with a slight frown. She was no stranger to getting hit on working in a place like this. “What can I get you?”
“A bottle of Parshé.”
“Whole bottle? That’ll run you about three hundred frags—”
The pirate dug out his frag clip and set it on the bar top. Dangerous. He felt the eyes of the nearby patrons falling to his money. The bartender smiled and leaned forward, her cleavage in full view. She wanted a hefty tip.
Yeah. Now you know I got money, it’s a different story, ain’t that right, honey?
He smiled back. Didn’t matter what the girl used him for as long as he got some action out of it, but loving wasn’t high on the list. At the top of the list was getting drunk as hell.
The bartender came back with the bottle, the liquid a vibrant purple, and a short glass. He pushed the glass toward her, uncorked the bottle, and poured her a gulp. She smiled even wider. He tried imagining what it would be like looking up at that smile was she was naked on top of him. Pretty damn nice, that’s how it’d be, he thought.
Gnar raised the bottle. “To fallen friends.”
She raised hers, glasses clinked, and they both drank. The bartender’s face turned a darker green with a slight tinge of red beneath it. The pirate had no reaction. In fact, he took another gulp. It felt good, the burn, as it went down his throat. Two drinks was all he needed for the pain to lessen. Half the bottle would get him just right, then a night with the green gal would be the cherry on top.
She left him, giggling, and helped another patron.
Gnar settled onto his stool; he wasn’t planning on leaving any time soon.
“Looks like that hurts,” said a voice to his right. “The burns. I know about that.”
The pirate turned. Sitting two stools down from him, almost completely shrouded by the darkness, was a human male. Gnar didn’t like humans before the incident on the outpost, true, but now that dislike had turned to hate. Still, he wasn’t in any shape to be disrespecting anyone and getting into a fight.
The man leaned forward so the light hit him. The pirate found himself staring, unable to force his gaze away from the stranger, because this man was no normal human. There was something in his eyes…something evil, something starved. Yet, he looked familiar, but where Gnar knew him from was a mystery. He had seen bums on distant planets better off than the man talking to him now. Hell, he’d seen decomposed corpses that looked better than this guy.
“What happened?” the man asked. “If you don’t mind me prying.”
Normally, the pirate would mind. If he was feeling particularly jumpy, he might even punch a stranger’s lights out, but with the injuries, the death of his crew, and the fact that this man spooked him more than Dahal Himself, he would be doing none of that.
So Gnar answered. “I got into a shootout. Lost.” No reason to lie; besides, he didn’t think he could lie.
The man rolled up one of his sleeves and showed the pirate a nasty burn stretching far beyond the elbow. It made the pirate’s injuries look like the scrapes little ones got on the playground. “I was in an explosion. Some dumb Thrathan whore set me up. Should’ve seen it coming.” He shrugged. “I’m getting too old for this type of life, I guess.”
Gnar chuckled and raised his bottle. “I know how you feel.” The man lifted his drink, too. “To old age.”
“To old age.” They both drank. “So you’re a pirate, huh?”
“I like to think of myself as a man with an eye for valuable goods.”
“That aren’t yours.” The man smiled, barely showing chipped and broken teeth through his wiry gray almost-beard. “A pirate.”
“If that’s what you want to call me. And what are you?”
“A man who has lost everything.”
“Well, that means you can only go up from here, right?”
The man’s face remained grim, and Gnar thought the man was going to kill him right there.
But he didn’t.
A few seconds later, the human’s lips cracked into a smile, and Gnar, not one who scared easily, felt his entire body relax.
“Yeah, good point,” the man said. “I’ve got some plans. Big plans. I’ll be all right.”
“Yeah?” the pirate asked. “Glad someone has plans in this galaxy.”
“You don’t?”
Gnar cleared his throat and took another swig of the Parshé. “After the shit I just went through…I’m retiring.”
“Giving up.”
“I guess so.”
“Don’t leave me in suspense,” the man said. “Tell me what happened.”
Gnar hesitated. K
eep your mouth shut, he told himself. You don’t know this guy. You— But he found himself talking before he could stop.
“Me and a couple of my boys hit what we thought was an abandoned outpost. Small job, but they had a bunch of weapons.” He rubbed his fingers together. “Worth a lot of money. You steal that shit, and you can flip it for about two hundred percent profit. This war that’s brewing between the Dominion and the rebels…there’s gonna be a lot of frags for the people who don’t pick a side.” He laughed, shook his head. “Hell, maybe I won’t retire yet.”
“Yeah, you’d be missing out on a lot of money, my friend.”
“That I would.”
“So I take it you came out empty-handed, huh?” the man asked.
“Yeah.” The pirate grinned without joviality. “A first for me. Lost a few of my brothers, too.” The smile faded quickly and turned to a grimace. “Those rebels bastards are going to pay. I recognized the one, too. Seen his face all over the Holo Net. Some people don’t think us pirates are cultured, but they don’t know shit. I follow the news. I read books. I appreciate art.” He didn’t know why he was spilling his guts to this stranger—this odd stranger, at that—but he was, and it felt…good?
“I believe you,” said the man. There was still a hardness in his eyes, but the starving look had changed into one of ravenous hunger. “Who was this person you recognized?”
Gnar shrugged. “Don’t really matter. He could be the blasted God-King of the Celestial Dominion or my own poppa—what happened, happened. He killed my crew, and now I’m riding solo.”
What transpired next surprised the pirate more than anything had in a long time. The man reached over and gripped the bandoliers crisscrossed over the pirate’s chest and pulled Gnar to his face. Those chipped teeth were inches away now. He could smell the stink of the man’s breath—like rotting meat. “It does matter, my friend. And you’re gonna tell me who it was.”
The pirate, despite his fear and surprise, slapped the man’s hand, but the man’s grip didn’t slacken. Instead, his other hand grabbed Gnar’s head and squeezed hard enough for him to wince. “I—don’t—gotta tell you—shit, old man!”
“Son, my finger is currently one and a half inches deep into your ear canal. All I have to do is push with another pound of force and I’ll sever your useless Gray brain. Would you like that?”
To prove his point, the finger slid in another half-inch. The pain was immense and immediate. The Gray shrieked, then bit down on his tongue hard enough to draw blood. At the same time, his vision went dark. He thought he was going to pass out, lose it, die—
Then the pressure lessened. “See?” the man snarled.
“Y-yeah,” Gnar answered.
“I’ve been polite to you so far, comrade, I hope you know that, but I’m a man at the end of his rope. I’ve got a lot of ground to make up. I know you don’t give a rat’s ass about that, but it’s the truth. I don’t have time to waste. No time to play games, either. So you’re gonna tell me what I want to hear. Now.”
“It—it was that bounty hunter. The one who stole the queen from Xovia,” the Gray answered. He was expecting the man’s grip to let up.
It didn’t.
The man only seemed angrier, his face red and mottled, his eyes harder and sharper than before, and his grip tightened.
Black swam around the edges of Gnar’s vision, and his mind screamed: You’re gonna die—gonnadiegonnadiegonnadie—
“Ryze Starlo?” the man asked.
“Yeah, that’s the bastard's name. It was h-him. I’d recognize that ship anywhere. Has that stupid name.”
“The Starblazer.”
Suddenly, the pressure disappeared as the man let go. The pirate fell off his stool. The music that had been playing had stopped. All eyes were on them, but no one was going to make a move to stop whatever was happening.
“Where were they going?” the man asked. He was standing now, his body a starved husk. The pirate thought he could take him. No one disrespected him like this and got away with it. He’d killed men for lesser reasons, and it just so happened that he had a handblas in his waistband.
He reached for the weapon now, but as soon as his fingers wrapped around the butt of the gun, he heard a loud crunch. It took a few minutes to realize the crunch came from the bones in his hand. He looked down. The man’s boot was currently atop his fingers. With the realization came an excruciating pain not even the Parshé could dull.
“I’d rethink that, friend,” the man said. He had his own blaster out—some type of Thrathan tech—and it was leveled at the pirate’s face. Finger on the trigger. A little more pressure and the pirate’s head would be a sizzling mess of flesh.
“Please, man, I told you what I know. It was Starlo.” The Gray put his arms up. Out of his peripheral vision he saw his right hand was now a crushed mess. Broken, maybe beyond repair.
“No, you didn’t. You know more. So I need you to think.”
The pirate was speechless. His lips opened and closed like a fish. Know more? I don’t know shit. I was just trying to rob them—
“You’ve got to the count of three to tell me something else useful.” The man pressed the blaster to the pirate’s forehead, and the pirate’s eyes crossed as he stared at the polished metal of the barrel.
“I-I d-don’t—” Gnar was unable to think. Everything that he had ever known seemed to leave his mind all at once. He couldn’t even tell the man his name.
“Wrong answer—”
“Wait!” the pirate pleaded. “They w-were doing something. A mission!”
“A mission? Too vague, my friend. Sorry.”
“No! It was a rescue mission. They were going to save one of their friends, a broad in a Dominion prison.”
The man relieved some of the pressure of the gun. He took half a step back. Good. That was good. Keep talking, the pirate told himself. Keep talking.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think—”
“You think? I need better than ‘I think.’”
The gun bit into Gnar’s flesh again.
“No! I know! It was Sker. The broad is on Sker! They’re trying to break her and some other rebels out.”
“Was there another woman with Starlo?”
“Yeah, an otter.”
“An otter? Any others?”
“No. It was just Starlo, an Atorga, and…a big-ass green blob…a Gelerris!”
The man laughed. “A Gelerris? I told you I don’t have time for bullshit.”
“Not bullshit, I swear!” Gnar was aware the bar had mostly cleared out except for a few who weren’t watching. Too drunk or too desensitized to care about what was happening. Even the bartender had fled, leaving the register and the stock of booze unattended. In such a shady place, Gnar found that detail insane.
“The Gelerris are all gone. I watched their planet burn.”
“I swear on my own mother, it was a Gelerris. Large and green and gooey. The tentacles were unmistakable, man! It was its telepathy that got my men killed!”
The man arched an eyebrow, his face doubtful.
“Maybe it was a hybrid or something, I don’t know, man!” Gnar sputtered. “I’m telling you the truth! They was there and they killed my crew!”
A few seconds passed, then a millennium. In that long moment, Gnar saw his life flash before his eyes. And it was no life to be proud of. As a young man, he had aspirations. He wanted a wife, a son and daughter, a job where he didn’t have to constantly look over his shoulder. Hell, he had wanted to be a writer. He wanted to write the Great Galactic Novel, follow in the footsteps of his heroes—heroes he had forgotten when he turned to this life of crime and inadequacy. Carwen Gepe, Marko Rellim, Sacul Egroeg, Amabo Idnahg—authors and artists he hadn’t thought of since before he turned to a life of crime, people who had changed the galaxy for the better. And here he was, a pirate, a murderer, a thief, a detriment to the universe.
It’s not too late to change, a voice said in Gnar’s head. He didn’t know where it
came from or who it was, but he heard truth in it. That voice was right, it wasn’t too late. All he had to do was survive this, and he would change—change for the better.
“So you’re telling me a wanted man, perhaps one of the most wanted people in the galaxy, has decided to fly his very recognizable ship into Dominion territory, infiltrate a Dominion prison, and save one of his comrades with a three-foot-tall Atorga and an extinct blob?” the man asked.
Gnar gulped. With the blaster pressed against his forehead, he nodded, metal scraping his skin.
The man laughed.
This is it, the pirate thought, this is the end. I’ll never get a chance to right my wrongs. I’ll die a horrible person and I’ll perish in the fires of the Undervoid for all of eternity. He thought of apologizing aloud but knew that would do no good. He was not one to beg, not a fair-weather anything, especially a fair-weather worshipper. He never had been and never would be…even if this was the end. He closed his eyes, accepting his fate—
The blaster discharged, the beam melted Gnar’s brain, and the pirate felt nothing. He would feel nothing ever again.
Ace Silver believed some people in the galaxy deserved that. The pirate was one of these people.
Then the former war-master stole Gnar’s ship, thinking, Screw that Thrathan tech.
And: Ryze Starlo, you’re mine.
Twenty-Three
Ryze looked at Blue in horror. Before him, the Gelerris was changing, his body firming and lengthening. Now Blue stood about as tall as Ryze did. His tentacles were gone, transformed into human arms and legs. He had a head attached to a neck and a neck attached to a torso. From a distance, in the right light, Blue might’ve passed as a human pretty well. Unfortunately for them, their mission could not be done from a distance.
“C’mon, Blue,” Alfis moaned, “make yourself have a face. You know I hate that shit, man!”
Ryze agreed.
Blue did have a head, but where the face should’ve been was only a blank slate. He looked like a mannequin—a green mannequin.
WORKING ON IT, Blue said. THIS ISN’T AN EASY PROCESS, FRIENDS. YOU WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND.
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