Jake looked at Fusar. She leaned forward and spoke into the vomit-soaked com.
“My name is Fusar,” she said. “My clan name is unknown to me as I was sold into slavery when I was five. When I was eight I came under the care of the Nostromic monks of Fidelis Prime. What followed was twelve years of systematic abuse, the details of which I will be happy to provide, but only once and in the presence of a high-ranking Jajan official.”
Jake looked at the alien with affection. Fusar might have been planning those words for some time, but to deliver them with such poise and class in these circumstances was beyond admirable, and spoke to a highly intelligent, adaptable individual. Jake expected the provincial officer to at least consult with his superiors, but the gruff voice returned much too soon to be delivering good news.
Jake’s shoulders sagged. This was a critical moment and all he wanted to do was curl up into a ball. Something about the name ‘Bullhead’ seemed familiar. It was a reference that conjured images of melee battle on the sand. Crowds of baying spectators. A maze that spread to the horizon. Plenty of images with nothing logical to connect them.
Desperate for more information, he checked his wrist pad - no access to Nex. His system had been shut down. He exchanged a worried glance with Fusar. They were flying blind in a completely alien tract of space.
urged their tormentor.
“We copy,” Jake said quickly. “I don’t have access to your maps.”
A couple of plasma bolts arced across the starboard bow. They had company - two snub-nosed, scarlet fighter units. A burly Jaj pilot glowered at Jake from his cockpit.
“It’s a start,” Jake muttered. “At least they’re not Cavan.”
Still, Jake knew their situation was parlous. They’d entered Jaj space in a Cavan shuttle alongside a Cavan warship. The Jaj had every right to believe that he represented the vanguard of an attack force. The fact that the warship was severely damaged wouldn’t alleviate the suspicion in the slightest.
The local authorities seemed content to let the warship spill its guts into the deadly vacuum of space. Cold, sure, but then the Jaj hardly had a reputation for altruism.
Jake adjusted his course in line with his escorts, dipping into the face of the red planet.
“We just need to be processed,” he assured Fusar, but his instincts told him otherwise.
The shuttle scudded through the upper mesosphere with minimal turbulence. The craft was a graceful transport and handled itself well. The atmosphere was thin and stable, allowing them to cut through at a steep angle.
Within minutes they were low enough to see details in the wide, orange landscape. An unidentified sun beat down on rocky, sandy terrain laced with valleys of bottle green. There was thick jungle in those gorges, which meant there had to be aquifers. The rest of the place looked bone dry.
The Jaj fighters leveled out at three hundred feet, guiding them in between ancient, collapsed cinder cones and grasping mesas. The shuttle emerged over a flat plain criss-crossed with thin trenches.
“Strange,” Jake murmured. “Irrigation?”
“No,” Fusar said in a voice tight with fear. “Holding pens.”
With a sinking feeling Jake realized his companion was probably right. There must have been thousands of people crammed into those narrow trenches. Bullhead Receiving Station would not be an elegant building in which they could take a number and wait for an interview - it was a proving ground, a place where vagrants and blow-ins were forced to prove themselves worthy of Jaj attention.
“Who could be capable of such brutality?” Fusar asked aloud.
There was no time to explore the notion. The Jaj escorts slowed down and hovered over an inconspicuous patch of dirt.
The tone left no room for debate. Jake dutifully landed the shuttle on the dusty granite, wondering what came next.
The Jaj fighters wheeled into the azure sky, probably glad to be done with their little chore.
“Wait, wait!” Jake growled into the com. “You can’t just leave us here!”
The fighter units hit their thrusters.
“Fuck you, you barbaric motherfuckers,” Jake said, needing to vent. A cold yet soothing hand closed over his own - Fusar peered at him calmly.
“The Jaj prove themselves through actions, not words,” she said. “It’s one of the few things I remember.”
On reflection, it was a concept Jake vaguely recalled from his limited travels through Jaj space. He’d never fully understood it, rejecting the notion as meaningless chest-beating. But here on Bullhead, the Jaj value had manifested itself as a huge battle ground.
There was a brutal logic to the philosophy. The Jaj prized the ability to survive above all else. They were expected to prove themselves throughout their lives. Perhaps their dealings with the manipulative Nostroma and scheming Cava05 had, over the centuries, pushed them to reject what they saw as the fundamental insincerity of verbal communication. For the Jaj, talk was unacceptably cheap and rife with danger.
Physical, material communication rarely lied. If a man risked his life for another, how could they ever be enemies? If a father gave up his daughter to strengthen ties with another clan, he gained many trusted allies for life.
But what were the rules on Bullhead? Were there any rules?
Jake stumbled to the galley, hunting for a pain killer. They didn’t have much time and would need clear, sober heads.
“Fusar,” he said, tossing her a booster. “Help me get the others free.”
Jake activated the aft gangway and the pair dragged Verity and Mandie out onto the rock. The duellist left Fusar with the women and rushed back to scrounge any supplies he could find.
“Hurry, Jake,” Fusar shouted as Jake wrestled frantically with the port gear lockers. Three plasma rifles, two protein blocks, a pair of optics and several sacs of water. He hauled the gear out in a duffel bag, sprinting as fast as his aching legs would allow.
He heard the missiles before he saw them. He pushed Fusar to the sand, protecting her with his body. The explosion flared brightly in the corner of his vision. Chunks of flaming debris rained down on them, and Jake was forced to stomp out a few embers in Verity’s hair. At length the dust settled to reveal a vessel twisted beyond recognition.
There would be no sifting through the rendered slag heap. The only material of any conceivable value was the raw metal, and they couldn’t exactly lug that across the plain in their weakened condition.
Feeling the hot sun on his scalp, Jake realized they would need shade very soon. The incapacitated women wouldn’t last long out here on the exposed rock. A dark line cutting across the orange dust suggested a trench some four hundred yards to the east. Jake handed Fusar the optics so she could see too.
Together they lugged their companions over the dust to the distant trench. Within minutes Jake was lathered in sweat, the dust irritating his eyes. Fusar, on the other hand, seemed better adapted to the conditions. At length they reached the trench and peered into its murky depths. For starters, it smelled foul, like something had been left to fester at the bottom. On the other hand, a cool breeze wafted through the incision, promising relief from the fierce sun.
“Lower them down,” Jake muttered, easing himself into the trench. He landed on squelchy mud and was glad to see the walls weren’t much taller than he. Fusar lowered Verity’s body with surprising strength. Jake propped the cybomancer against the wall and fed her water. Mandie came next, who seemed a little closer to consciousness. Fusar joined them and peered apprehensively into the darkness.
“All we can d
o is wait,” Jake said. It worried him that the women had taken so long to recover from drift travel. They would need all four on deck to have any hope of surviving this place.
“Jake …”
Fusar had frozen still, her eyes locked on something he couldn’t see. He pulled on his optics. The trench was filled with ice-blue specks. Fireflies, maybe, only they weren’t moving at all.
With a start he scrambled back, Lust already in his hand. There were no fireflies in this trench.
There was a horde of lizard men, each one coolly appraising the intruders.
Fusar raised a hand in what might have passed for a gesture of peace. The duellist gradually became aware of a rhythmic sound and realized the lizards were stamping their feet into the mud. All along the fetid trench, hundreds if not thousands of lizards united in their cryptic reaction.
Jake’s gun hand wavered.
He was a duellist. A scoundrel entering middle age and searching blindly for a single scrap of redemption. He’d caused enough pain in his life to know he didn’t deserve to be alive. He certainly didn’t deserve Fusar’s trust or loyalty.
But, here on Bullhead, where the line between life and death seemed precariously thin, he decided he had something to live for.
He tossed his gun to the mud, following Fusar’s lead.
She had become his moral compass, his north star, his everything.
This wasn’t the retirement he’d expected, but he stood tall and loose. Finally, thrillingly at peace with himself.
Jake Le Sondre was a duellist. He’d spent most of his life in a tandem, wired to serve another of his own kind. And yet it was only now, as he placed his worthless life in Fusar’s hands, that the icy specter of loneliness seemed to melt away.
The duellist had come in from the cold, that much felt certain. And, by the grace of a lowly Jaj girl he’d found in a pit, he was finally willing to cherish what lay on the other side of survival.
Coming Soon
The Scarlet Paladin (Five Empires Book 3)
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AEGIS COLONY:
The Sands of Osiris (Book 1)
The Jungles of Verdano (Book 2)
The Ice of Solitude (Book 3)
FIVE EMPIRES:
The Blue Corsair (Book 1)
The Emerald Duellist (Book 2)
The Emerald Duellist (Five Empires Book 2) Page 18