by Candace Sams
“P-please let me die,” he begged. “Please, please, please … ”
No one came near, and night finally fell. His breathing became shallow, and he struggled to clear his lungs. Even as he pled for release from life, autonomic responses kept him breathing. He cursed the ability the human body had for compensating when all physical hope was gone.
He heard someone approach. Heavy footsteps fell on the earth around him.
“Put him in the back of the hauler with Codge,” one voice growled out. “We’ll take them to the pit as Prometheus ordered. The incinerators are due to burn off bodies tomorrow.”
“Hurry, then,” a second voice advised. “There’s a whore waiting for me at the tavern, and I have a taste for human women.”
Marcos lay quite still as two slug minions conversed, and as they heaved his body into their hovercraft sled. He bit his lip against crying out, even as he was thrown in, and some of his burned flesh came loose. In the dim light he could see it falling from his forearm, like water fell from his body in a shower.
“Did you hear something?”
“If he’s still alive, the incinerators will take care of him tomorrow. I’ll lay odds he won’t survive the night at any rate. No one has ever been burned that badly and survived.”
Thankfully, Marcos felt himself losing consciousness. Blackness finally engulfed him just as his body was dumped among the other dead of Delta Seven.
• • •
In the cave that now served as her home, Nova wept harder. She held her pet in her arms and rocked the small animal back and forth.
“They didn’t have to do that to him, Una. They could have just killed him outright. There was no reason to hurt him so badly. I’ve never seen anyone get that much plasma.”
The puppy whined, licked its mistress’s face, and put one tiny paw on her chest.
“If only I could have done something,” she sobbed. “I’m no better than all the others I’ve blamed for not standing up.”
As Nova sat there, she imagined those beautiful green eyes as the man had stared courageously at his attackers. Perhaps someone would look for him. But if he were a lone gem merchant as rumors claimed, then he would be incinerated without anyone even saying words over him. There were many at the pit that’d died because of exposure to fire plasma or some illness. At least some of them had family who would ask the Goddess for acceptance into the next life.
Nova gently put Una aside and stared at the entrance to her cave.
“I can at least do that much. No one goes to the pits long after dark, not even the slugs.”
She grabbed her cloak and made her way to the marketplace. Stealth was her companion as it always was. Unfortunately, to get to the death pits where the bodies were thrown on Prometheus’s orders, she had to go back to the scene of the horror first. The pits were only a short distance on the other side. But the journey vividly reminded her of the shrieks and moans she’d so recently heard.
As she crept through the shadows and listened, she sensed she was alone on the street. The day’s events found the slugs drinking in the tavern and loudly boasting of their prowess in killing a tied man. She actually heard them laugh about it.
With grim intent, she kept to the shadows and made her way to where the stranger had been tied.
In the light of the full moon, the stranger’s cloak and shirt still lay on the ground. Nova grabbed the garments and held them to her chest. For some reason, no one had picked them up. Likely, everyone had ignored them in order to get away as soon as they’d been allowed, just like she had.
Guilty pain settled in her heart. She looked across the marketplace once more and stared at one of the columns. It was still smoking. There was even a black, oval burn mark where the stranger had fallen to the ground. It led to a trail of ash and charred bits of other clothing where he’d dragged himself and rolled in the dirt. “No one should have to die like that,” she whispered again, then hurried away toward the pits.
When she arrived, there were only a few bodies, but some of them had been there for a week or more awaiting incineration. The smell was indescribably abominable. But she clenched her jaw and searched through the rocks and rubble. Then she found him.
He lay on a pile of loose stones, his hands reaching for the sky in a clenched posture. She’d seen that before, when the last stages of death overtook the victims. They’d tried to breathe, then had gasped their last as they’d clawed and writhed for air.
She knelt beside the horrible, scorched figure and placed his cloak and shirt over him. They were his property after all. And putting them in the pit with the man meant no one would steal them.
She clasped her hands together, looked toward the night sky, and quietly prayed.
“Creator Goddess, please let this brave stranger come into another life. Please lead him to an existence where he’ll be rewarded for his deeds this day. Have pity on him, I beg you.”
One reaching hand slowly turned toward her and stretched outward.
Nova almost froze in horror.
“H-help me … please,” he croaked.
She swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and glanced toward the heavens before pulling the cloak and shirt off his face. She finally got a good look into the open green eyes of the stranger. In that poignant moment, the moonlight illuminated his face, as if to punctuate the last remnants of a battling god.
“You can’t be alive,” she whispered. “No one could have survived that much plasma.”
“P-please …” he begged as he stretched his hand toward her again.
She put out one shaking hand on the side of his head. He weakly cried out. By some miracle, his beautiful eyes had been spared, though the rest of his body seemed burned beyond recognition.
In the moon’s light, those striking eyes begged for some tender mercy in the universe; mercy not shown on Delta Seven in a very long time.
She couldn’t leave him. In that moment, Nova knew she’d been brought there by the Goddess’s hand.
“I-I’ll take you someplace safe,” she quietly told him. “But you’re too large for me to carry.” She thought for a moment. If she’d been brought there for a reason, then there was a solution to the problem of getting him to safety. He might not last long thereafter, but he’d be with someone who’d help him into the next life.
It suddenly occurred to her that the slugs had parked their hovercraft outside the tavern. Attached to one was a hauler—likely the very one that’d carried her victim to this pit.
She remembered how to operate a hovercraft, though those she was used to were different from the small conveyances slugs brought from their cargo ships.
Still, it was worth trying. She could take one, have the stranger to her cave in just a few minutes, and get it back before the Limaxians ever knew what happened. They’d likely be so drunk that they’d never know the transport had been moved.
“I’ll be back,” she said as she whispered down to the surviving hero of the day. “Do you hear me? I’m coming back. Don’t give up. Just keep breathing. Okay?”
He barely nodded, but he’d understood.
With new purpose and courage to go with it, Nova re-covered the stranger’s torso with his cloak and shirt. She gently touched his cheek one time before making her way back up the rocky hillside, over the dead, and through the garbage.
She ran faster than she’d ever run in her life.
Please let him be alive when I see him again.
Chapter 4
Marcos lay in pain so deep that he began to imagine someone had come. That was the cruelest part. To lie there believing another soul said they’d help, only to really be alone, was worse than anything he’d ever experienced.
He begged again to die.
Every move he made pulled more loose skin from his body and drove him into a new round of torment. The rocks beneath him felt like glass wedging its way into his body. Every breath he took was worse than the last. He looked into the night sky and thought of home, his
siblings and their families. And he thought of Darius’s two-year-old daughter, Cory, and all the other nieces and nephews in the castle nursery he wouldn’t hold again. The children he wouldn’t ever conceive with some woman drifted into and out of his tortured mind.
The worst part was knowing his family would never have a shred of his body left to bury.
Marcos began to cry, using the last of his body’s fluid in the process. The damage done to his torn, bleeding, and burnt form was nothing compared to what was being done to his spirit. It was as though someone had ripped who he was, and all he’d been, away. He reached up to the sky as best as he could and bitterly pled for his family to know where he was and to have them find some small remnant of his remains: a finger bone or a lock of what was left of his hair. Anything they could bury with the dignity that was now denied him.
The whole thing was his fault.
He’d wanted to save that elderly merchant, had gone off mission and paid the price. Anger over seeing an innocent tormented—and disgust over witnessing how a young girl was forced to beg for a man’s life—had driven him to open his mouth when he should have kept it closed. But no one else had stepped forward.
Too late, he’d learned why.
The entire colony had been so terrorized that no one would dare speak. He now knew what the scorch marks on the buildings meant. For every one of them, some soul had probably died; someone who might have stood for what was right, just as he’d tried to do.
Look where it’d gotten him.
He was lying among the refuse of Delta Seven with the dead and the garbage of a doomed world piled around his burned shell of a body. The pain was so great he could well wish himself dead a thousand times, but his stupidity in landing there would never be undone.
At times his mind drifted to why he’d done it. Then he’d decide again that he’d had no choice. What did it matter? That girl, the elderly man, and scores of others would probably die anyway.
Perhaps the slugs, who had to be working with consent of the governor, would kill everyone before they moved on to plunder some other world. Then what would his brave act mean? He uttered one croaking plea to the heavens.
“Please …want to … see my family again … the pain … want to die … c-can’t be d-dishonored … n-not like this.”
• • •
Nova stopped at the top of a small rise, only a few feet from where Green Eyes slumped. She heard his plea, and her heart broke.
For two years, she’d seen the result of public torture. Friends no longer knew friends. Longtime business adversaries no longer quarreled because there was nothing left to fight over. The Limaxian pirates and the traitor Adaman Forrell had taken everything for themselves. In that one small way, they were all united. Indeed, the citizens had two things in common: their hatred of the governor, and the loss of hope.
The first time the fire plasma was used, that display had taken all fight from every heart. The second and successive times were meant to make scurrying cowards of every man, woman, and child.
Nova renewed her vows of hatred for an empire where an allied king—one who was supposed to have periodically checked on planets within the alliance—sat on a rich throne, ordering his League of Enforcers to ignore small, unimportant colonies like Delta Seven. While her world wasn’t ruled by King Starlaw, as head of The Constellation League of Enforcers it was the man’s duty to make sure that all law enforcement alliances were honored. So where was he? Surely he had to know something on her planet was very wrong. Even normal messages weren’t getting out, at least not without Forrell’s approval or censorship. And this had been the case as far as anyone had known.
She moved forward and knelt beside the weeping, green-eyed warrior.
“Don’t die, Green Eyes. You’re not dishonored. You stood against a malevolent beast when no one else would; even as I did nothing. But I’ll help you now. I promise I’ll always be here and I’ll help you.”
“Y-you came back.”
“I wouldn’t break my promise. I’ll stay with you.” She gently wrapped her gloved fingers around his wrist. “This is going to hurt worse than anything you can imagine. But you have to try and get into the hovercraft. We don’t have much time. I’ll take you someplace safe, but we have to move quickly. Understand?”
He nodded.
She took a deep breath and prayed he wouldn’t cry out too loudly. When her fingers tightened around his wrist, pain sent him into spasmodic convulsions. She immediately released her grip and tried to overcome the revulsion of his burned flesh. The smell of it was unholy. But she could do him no good if they couldn’t move.
“What’s your name?” she quietly asked. She repeated herself several times while trying to keep him from injuring himself further. His body flailed against the rocks in a twisted, ghastly way. She almost had to sit on him before his thrashing subsided. Eventually, he breathed deeply and tried to answer her repeated request.
“My n-name is M-Marcos,” he muttered.
“All right, Marcos. I’m called Nova Drayton. So we both know each other.”
He simply gasped.
“We’ll try again. Can you push yourself up without my help? Even just a bit?”
“N-No.”
She leaned very close to him and knew the words she’d say would be cruel. But they might be what motivated him to move. “I can’t carry you; you’re too big. If you don’t get up, then you’ll be incinerated here tomorrow. There’ll be nothing of you left, and anyone who ever cared about you will never know what happened. No one will admit you were ever here. It will be as though you simply disappeared.”
He breathed harder. The man seemed panicked by the idea that such a thing could happen. Whatever made him do so, whether it was her words or thoughts of his own making, he finally rolled onto his side and pushed himself into a sitting position.
Nova put her hands to her face when his screams of agony echoed off the rock quarry pit around them.
“Goddess … forgive me for what I’m about to do, but I have to get you out of here.”
Without telling him, Nova pulled her cloak tighter around her body to protect herself against residual plasma on his. She lifted one of his charred arms around her shoulders and pushed herself straight up with all her strength.
“Stand with me. Now!” she commanded.
Clumsily, Marcos did as she ordered and moved where she led. He stifled more screams as they progressed. She didn’t know where the strength came from—hers or his. She simply moved forward, pushed his massive form into the hauler on the back of the hovercraft, then leapt into the driver’s seat. The open design of the silver, flat transport allowed the air to flow around her and the injured man as they moved. She heard him tearing at the metal of the hauler bed with his hands. The air on his burned skin had to be agonizing. But he didn’t cry out again.
She couldn’t imagine the willpower it took for him to remain as silent as he did. Suppressing that kind of pain would likely cost him later. Given everything he’d been through that day, and all she’d seen of him, he was either the bravest man she’d ever known or the most foolish.
Whatever he was or wasn’t, he was now her responsibility. And she wouldn’t let him be caught again.
She drove straight to the outskirts of town as fast as the transport could move. There, in a small dense forest were hillsides where the miners used to work. The caves there were devoid of any sizable stones. Miners now worked on the other side of the small colony, under the strict supervision of Prometheus, his slug minions, and Adaman Forrell.
She knew every bush, rock, cave, and cranny. It was here, in a place where her father had told her it would be safe, that she now made her home. Slugs never came here, and she knew she and her green-eyed victim would be safe. He might not live the night, though some instinct told her he could.
The transport maneuvered effortlessly, right in front of the small opening to her cave. For someone of her size, it was easy to walk right in. But for man M
arcos’s height, he’d half to duck and then get on his knees before entering the small, inner chamber where he could finally stand. Standing right now wasn’t the issue. Just getting him out of the transport and into a position where he could move at all was.
Nova hopped out of the driver’s seat and loped to the hauler. Marcos lay there on his side, staring blankly and curled into a fetal position. But he was still breathing. Again, her heart melted when she saw him lying there so helplessly. His current position was in direct contrast to the bold man who’d stood up to Prometheus.
She put her face close to his and stared into his eyes. “We’re someplace safe. I’ve been here for almost two years, and the Limaxians have never found me. Neither have Forrell’s guards or the constables. They’re all in collusion. But none of them thinks this place is worth the dirt piled here. You’ll be safe. I have things that can help heal you if you want to survive. Do you want to live, Marcos? Do you?”
Even in the muted moonlight, even as he lay so still and quiet, he turned his gaze toward her. The expression in his bright green eyes said yes.
“All right, then. You’re going to have to hurt some more. I have to move you inside this cave.” She pointed behind her. “But once there, you’ll be safe. Will you try and help me one more time?”
Slowly, Marcos pushed himself up from the floating platform. She saw the massive agony his movements caused. His eyes rolled back in his head several times, and painted an eerie picture in the moonlight surrounding them.
The pain almost sent him into unconsciousness again, but she kept talking to him. Still, he never cried out.
She witnessed strength that must have been delivered by the Goddess herself. He pushed himself into a sitting, then a standing position, and actually walked. It was one slow step at a time but he moved.
“Gods of old … I-I know what this is costing you, Marcos. But once you’re inside the cave, you can cry out all you want. It’s deep within the hillsides and no one will hear. I know. I screamed for days after the plasma hit me.” She didn’t add that she hadn’t been as badly burned as he was.