by Scott Moon
Seccon closed his eyes against the memory of his wife. For a time, he savored the memory of her words and did not attempt to understand the remembered sounds. They had argued for days and nights and thrown the good plates.
Of course it was all about the genetics of the Blood Royal. Sveinn and his sisters carried the purest heritage of Earth before the Crises, remnants of all races, all ancestries, every hope and dream of the blue planet no matter their differences. True members of the Blood Royal line were neither white nor black nor yellow nor brown. Complete racial and social integration had taken thousands of years and there were many who hated the concept. Sveinn and his sisters were the most perfect mutts of the human race that could be bred outside of a test tube. With the exception of feral humans on abandoned planets, the Blood Royal were the only members of the modern race without technological contamination — without genetic pre-planning and cybernetic restructuring. They were the living templates of everyman and everywoman of all races.
How could humankind survive without such historical unity? He glanced after Borghild and tried to forget the question.
The smell of ash permeated everything in the Sky Clan village, especially the rushes and thatch roof of the hut. Without standing, or even sitting up, he was able to turn just enough to see the tunnel opening near the wall post. Aefel had nearly burned him alive. Two weeks after his fake execution, he was still hacking up black phlegm.
The ruse wouldn’t work for long. This village wouldn’t last a month before ESC commandos sterilized it or someone just bombed it from orbit. For now, it was best to remain hidden and let Borghild and her huge breasts take care of him.
No more traveling carnivals for him. He had been rather happy on Grendel 0473829 before Aefel 70391 came. The brief period of freedom and hope had nearly restored his faith in miracles.
The strangest thing was that Emperor Dan Uburt-Wesson would have agreed with Casia. Of course he would, since his assassins had been sent to kill the last of the Toman Sorven-Hollun Blood Royal line, the boy who would be named Sveinn on Grendel. There could be no contest for supreme power. Civil war could not be endured.
Morning birds cried at the sun, circling the village like drones — or, perhaps — simple birds. They perched on rooftops and squawked at Borghild. Everyone liked her; even the birds seemed happier around her.
He sighed and stared at the ceiling.
His time on Grendel had been one of the best weeks of his life. During that time, Aefel had lain in a dark, smoky hut similar to this one and suffered injuries few soldiers endured in the modern army. Seccon could scarcely believe the FALD soldier hadn’t died of infection on this primitive world.
Through the doorway, he watched a scene of domestic tranquility.
Borghild sang a washing song as she worked elbow deep in soapy water. Apparently, her emergency had been little more than helping other women with chores in the village commons. Maybe she would cook something and remember him in his dark lair. Voices argued, although he could not make out the words. He listened for a time and amended his assessment of Borghild. Everyone liked her, except for other women.
2
MORNING
BORGHILD’S DWELLING
GRENDEL 0473829: SURFACE, HIGHLAND VALLEY 83A2T
MISSION CLOCK: n/a – FUGITIVE
SITTING deep inside of the hut, gazing through the wide doorway, Seccon saw Fey striding past Borghild and the other villagers. Strange as the moment seemed, he found an odd triangular unity in his understanding, such as it was, of Fey, Borghild, and his wife, Casia. The first was a creature of royal blood, the second a feral barbarian, and the third the most advanced new human he’d ever known.
Casia had been unpopular with other women, as was Borghild. The reasons were vastly different, but the effect was similar; each woman was self-sufficient and slow to find real happiness. Fey was different from Casia and Borghild. She seemed blessed and entitled at the same time. Seccon sighed. He probably judged her harshly because he didn’t like her.
A draft sent shivers into the core of Seccon’s body. He pressed his back to the wall, drew in his knees where he sat on the floor, and hugged his legs with both arms. Another cold and damp place came to mind — a hunting world that became the battlefield of Earth System Commonwealth Military Expeditionary Forces, legions of the Capital Trading Company, and the security garrison of the privately owned planet — scorned as mere park rangers by the ESC and CTC soldiers alike. It had been the same season, in the same hemisphere of a very similar world as Grendel. The only difference was the state-of-the-art hunting lodges and fully functioning space stations that offered modern travel options and support versus the ghostlike technology currently in orbit around Grendel.
The young, extremely beautiful Casia 70004 had walked into his life in the form of a rookie not even done with basic training before her first deployment. That had been in the days before general troops made drops from the atmosphere. Desperate times — soldiers going into battle without proper equipment or training, battleships sent to the Fleet without adequate evaluation trials, Nations of the Commonwealth fighting their own wars and claiming worlds like they were bags of cookies.
He remembered watching her disembark from the shuttle parked on the airfield.
“Have I done something inappropriate, Captain?” she asked.
Seccon, at a loss for words, tried to concentrate on her eyes so that she wouldn’t think he was checking her out. “I am only a lieutenant, Private 70004.”
She smiled with the corner of her mouth, the right corner, the place he would learn to focus his attention during these awkward moments. “Private? I’m not even a scrap of dog shit on the First Sergeant’s boot, or so I have been told.”
He laughed as the aforementioned sergeant stormed down the line of new soldiers, half-intelligible words flying from his mouth. Casia had been one of the few who did not flinch and paid for her boldness with a punishment march in full gear around the base in lieu of sleep.
Seccon had sat inside one of the guard towers drinking coffee and watching her squad belt out unoriginal marching cadences as sleet began to fall. Bowed heads and hunched shoulders did nothing to change the fact that they were wearing BDU pants and tank tops. Their boots splashed through icy puddles. Wind hit them in the face each time they ran the north stretch of the base perimeter road.
Seccon breathed the memory like air, but could only hold it for so long.
Borghild dropped a bucket of wash water and grabbed Fey as she made for Seccon’s tiny hut. She was taller and stronger than Fey — much more attractive than Fey or Casia, truth be told. Seccon wondered how she would have fared on the long ago punishment march.
“He is resting. Don’t you know it now?” Borghild punctuated the statement with a firm tug and Seccon saw a glimpse of her true character. The tall, big-breasted, young blond was stronger than advertised and not afraid to get physical with one of the village’s favorite daughters.
Fey yanked her arm free and continued toward Seccon’s hiding place. “Watch yourself, Borg.” She stopped just outside the door, looked down, then turned to look back at Borghild. “I won’t be long.”
Seccon exhaled, disappointed. He’d been surprisingly curious to learn who would win an eye gouging, hair pulling duel to the dirt. His voyeuristic taste for violence shamed him. Fey had the eyes of a killer. He had seen that the first time they met. Now, however, he wondered if Borghild might be as ruthless as Fey, or even as ruthless as his wife had been.
Fey stepped inside and slammed the crude door without looking back. She put both hands on her hips and glared at Seccon.
“He is not coming back.” Seccon struggled to find the words he needed. “And if he does, you won’t live long.”
Fey glared defiantly, eyes challenging the truth of his words. “Big words for a man he spared.”
Seccon shifted his feet but did not get up. He wanted to stand to face the small woman’s anger, but the axe on her belt looked a litt
le too close to her hand and her eyes promised a front-row seat at a blood bath.
“Why did he burn down his shelter with you inside if he wanted you to live?” she asked.
“I think you know the answer,” Seccon said. He waited for her response, had been waiting days for it, in fact. There were ways to determine how much Aefel had told her. He could ask. The thought made him smile and think of his wife, who had been so much better at these kinds of things.
She had been better in every way at everything. It seemed impossible that she could be killed by anything less than Godlike force. In the end, he supposed that was about what happened. Before the death of his wife, the Weapons Research Division had meant nothing to him. His opinions changed after she fell victim to the Carosn Device that ended the war for Regenison Independence.
Seccon hated secret weapons.
Fey crossed her arms.
Seccon smiled. “You are the smarter of the two. Aefel would have betrayed his plan moments after I pricked his FALD Reaver pride.”
“Why do you keep calling him that?” she asked.
“That is who he is,” Seccon said.
Fey shrugged and flared her nostrils. “Maybe this is true, but I still don’t know what FALD means.”
Seccon stared at her. “I could tell you the words, but they would mean nothing to you.”
“Try me,” she said.
Seccon considered his options. There were reasons not to tell Fey and the others the truth about Grendel or the Earth System Commonwealth, which had expanded its sovereignty over a dozen solar systems since the beginning of the space age. The main reason was that she would never believe him.
He wished he knew how much Aefel had shared with her. “FALD is just a word. It means he is a warrior of great skill.”
“He wanted someone to think you were dead, but left all the witnesses here to see the truth. What was wrong with him?” Fey asked abruptly. “That doesn't make sense.”
Seccon saw the tears in her eyes and wondered if he had judged her harshly. He reached for empathy, but found he still didn’t like the young woman. By association, he was developing a strong dislike for Aefel, who was a man he had been prepared to like and respect. The soldier would be his greatest ally or worst enemy. A smart man would avoid going against the FALD Reaver.
Seccon knew many soldiers like him. Bad news, every one of them. He opened his hand and stared at the oversized coin, reading the inscription quietly. “Humans sit Humanum.”
“What did you say?”
Seccon did not look up immediately. He knew what the words meant and thought they would be harmless to reveal, but wasn’t sure he wanted to communicate with Fey. She was overconfident. She made too many demands on him and others. Deep in his heart, he knew that the real reason he resented the small woman was that Fey and Borghild were rivals in the clan. Seccon liked Borghild. Perhaps he more than liked her. Many times, he awoke and was overwhelmed by the thought of her face and her smile and it was the only reason he decided to continue living.
“Humans sit Humanum. It means humans must be human,” Seccon said.
Fey cocked her head slightly and stepped forward, looking at him fiercely. Seccon could never guess if she meant to flirt or tell a joke or something else, although it was his general experience that she was about to say something caustic. Seccon sighed and tried to relax. He looked down, knowing it probably wasn’t the best thing to do around a woman who carried an axe and possibly had killed more men than he had. This mission was making him feel old.
“What does that mean, singer?” Fey put one hand on her hip. “Humans must be human. That does not seem like much of a challenge. Not a quest to sing about.”
Seccon rose to his feet, moving slowly so as not to startle her into a fight. He looked around the room — past Fey toward Borghild and the women outside. The village and the people in it were much cleaner and better organized than he had anticipated from a fake society built on poorly understood historical records of the Danelaw of Old England. In other circumstances, he might have visited this historical reenactment society and paid good money to retire here. But the place had been abandoned generations ago and was about to become a cathedral of death.
“It is time for me to go outside, Fey. There are people that will come after Aefel and try to kill him. These people are warriors more deadly than anything the Hawk Clan or the Arrow Clan or any of your other bad neighbors could send against us. You may not believe this now, but they have machines that can rain death from the sky. It will be as though the gods have ordered the destruction of your village.”
Color drained from Fey’s face. Her aggressiveness went with it. She stared at Seccon with the childlike expressions of need, anger, and resentment.
“Tonight, I will look for the enemy. If I decide it is time to move the Sky Clan, can you help me get people out of the village before the fire comes?”
Fey nodded and looked at the floor. At first, her body language was scared and submissive, but quickly grew angry.
“You don’t have to like me, Fey.”
“That is just as well, because I don’t.”
3
NIGHT
SKY CLAN VILLAGE
GRENDEL 0473829: SURFACE, HIGHLAND VALLEY 83A2T
MISSION CLOCK: n/a – FUGITIVE
Seccon waited until nightfall and then left the village. He hadn’t been on the planet long, by the standards of a regular campaign, but he was growing familiar with the peculiar sounds of this place at night. There was no way to know if it resembled Earth, but he suspected it was similar. Entrepreneurs never disclosed the setup atrocities to their shareholders when seeking financing for a historical reenactment world. There had been a planet dedicated to the early Roman Empire, for example, that required a race of semi-sentient dragons to be nearly eradicated. Those that were allowed to survive were removed and resettled in the nearby system, and subsequently developed many aggressive behavioral flaws.
A dragon slayer theme park arose from the fiasco, stock values in the spin-off venture skyrocketed and then crashed, never to be heard from again. Seccon wondered what happened to Draco 084321. Probably there were the bones of adventure tourists covering the planet’s surface. Probably it was what the FALD Reavers called a charnel house of hell.
He tried not to think about what had been done to Grendel 0473829 before colonists were allowed to make landfall. He understood that many of the first people on this planet were paid well and others were given deals they couldn’t afford to refuse. This generally meant there had been a statistically significant number of condemned criminals imported to bolster the population numbers. Sure they had their memories wiped and all evidence of their past erased, but that technology was never as good as advertised.
Maybe this allowed them to cheat destiny, change antisocial behaviors, wipe the slate clean, quit murdering, raping, and stealing on a planet where stealing was much the same as committing murder. Take a family’s cow and they wouldn’t survive the winter. Perhaps these men and women beat the odds.
Or not. Seccon wasn’t an expert on behavior modification.
His role for the last fifty years had been security. He was good at training guards to work as a team. Motivating men and women of action to stay alert during boring assignments was an art. Seccon did it well. He understood threat assessments and intelligence reports. He also realized that, in the field, the night belonged to the military.
Soldiers such as Aefel 70391 received intensive training for night maneuvers. Seccon’s own military training and experience occurred a long time ago. He understood, however, the elements of stealth and all the ways it could be defeated. Crouching low to the ground, he moved slowly. He cast no shadows, created no silhouette, and resisted the urge to move until he was certain he could take a step without crushing a twig.
He also understood that as part of the final analysis, getting caught would provide answers. Any man, woman, or beast that detected his movements would necessarily rely
on advanced technology, and this was the sort of person he sought to find. There was a secret society on Grendel. He believed he knew their purpose. If he was wrong, he would die.
He had done a lot of research before assassinating the Emperor. He had learned much about things that were seemingly unrelated. His investigation into certain individuals associated with Grendel had led him down false trails. But one of the things he knew, and that his research confirmed, was that the early settlers wanted to forget the past. They wanted a new start. They believed in the historical reenactment a little bit too much.
Several centuries later, it was as though they had never been from Earth. They were Grendels.
Seccon moved farther from the village and looked back at the mead hall. He thought of the Beowulf story and how Grendel, a descendent of Cain, murdered King Rothgar’s people for having a loud party. Nothing but smoke and silence arose from the main hall of Sky Clan village, so he did not fear immortal monsters or fairy tales.
A gathering of women argued good-naturedly beyond his line of sight, probably sitting near a fire with doors open to release smoke. The simple dwellings had abysmally poor ventilation, but they retained heat and that was what mattered in the land of ice and snow.
Seccon pulled his fur-lined cloak tight and took his time moving up the trail away from the village. He stopped again, searching the ground and the sky for evidence of an Earth System Commonwealth strike force. His ears told him nothing. He could smell only the evidence of simple living and nature. Snowflakes began to fall. A scarce wind caused him to shiver, slowly at first, but with increasing intensity. If he remained motionless, he might see something moving through the night that did not expect a sane man freezing under the branch of a tree to bear witness to.
He might also die of exposure — go to sleep and never wake up.
Time passed slowly and he doubted his mission. Grendel was not as cold as his home world, Saber 211455.