Star Wolf (Shattered Galaxy)

by David G. Johnson

  “You don’t like me very much, do you?”

  She laughed. John caught a hint of derision hidden in there somewhere.

  “To be honest, pale,” Voide replied with a tone that projected the resentment bundled into that sneer on her face. “I don’t have much of an opinion about you at all. I’ll like you more when whoever arranged for us to snatch you away from Dawnstar pays up. I can’t wait to get off this backward rock.”

  John chose to ignore the dig at his homeworld’s lack of sophistication. There was something hiding under that cool exterior, and his natural curiosity goaded him to dig it out.

  “So tell me something, why do you do it?”

  “Do what?” Voide snapped, looking perturbed at John’s insistence on making conversation.

  “Be a mercenary. I mean you are a beautiful, determined, and intelligent woman. I have no doubt you could succeed at anything you put your mind to. Why would you choose to fly around the galaxy endangering your life for pay?”

  “Do you always answer your own questions?”

  John wasn’t sure if Voide was being serious or sarcastic.

  “What do you mean?” he pressed, starting to wonder who was mentally dissecting whom.

  “For pay!” she answered. “You just asked why I would endanger my life for pay. That’s exactly why any merc does what they do: to get paid.”

  “There are many ways to make money that don’t involve killing or the risk of being killed.”

  John caught Voide’s feral smile out of the corner of his eye. It made his skin crawl as her voice dropped into a smooth, haunting rhythm.

  “Yeah, but I’m very good at killing.”

  Silence fell for a few brief moments as John pondered her statement. He did not doubt her sincerity, but chose to adjust the focus of his inquiries onto a less morbid target.

  “Life is about more than getting paid.”

  “Really?” Voide replied. “That might be a more credible philosophy if it wasn’t coming from a multi-billionaire.”

  Apparently Voide had done her homework on more than just Tede’s weapon laws. Salzmann Pharmaceuticals was a publicly traded company so its records were open, as were much of John’s holdings. She was clearly trying to rattle him, but being an experienced gambler gives one a passable poker-face, even when the cards start going against you.

  “Money can’t buy everything,” John said, returning to his point. Suddenly a sad nostalgia fell over him as he thought about how true that statement had proven in his own life. “Trust me, I know.”

  “What it can’t buy, it can rent; for a few hours at least,” Voide quipped.

  John kept his focus on the road and off her sly grin. That buy-vs-rent joke was one John had heard too many times before, usually from people living payday to payday. It never got any funnier. Voide was clearly ducking any serious questions, but he wasn’t about to fold his cards just yet.

  “Can you be serious for one minute? You are far too complex a woman for there to be nothing more to your career choice than just money. What about the Prophane? They are your people. Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like to go back to them? You could be instrumental in bringing peace between the Prophane and Humaniti.”

  Voide gave John a not-too-gentle smack on the back of his head, startling him and causing him to swerve. The maneuver nearly sent the CUV off the road and into a ditch.

  “Hey!” he interjected.

  “Do you have brain damage, or just memory issues?”

  “What are you talking about?” John felt his face flushing as he gripped the steering wheel tighter.

  “I already told you, pale, there is no going back. I am a Pariah. That’s not just a fun nickname I use at parties. Any Prophane would try to kill me on sight. Molon and the crew of the Star Wolf are my people now.”

  She flashed a deep scowl. John started to respond but Voide raised her voice and interrupted before he could form his next sentence.

  “Okay, you really want to know about me?”

  John nodded.

  “Fine. Here’s a history lesson you won’t find in any books. I was on one of the first Prophane ships that crossed the Stygian Rift into Humaniti space. Ours was a colony ship and I was an infant at the time. My real family, and every other adult Prophane on board, fought to the death when Empire Marines on patrol boarded our ship.”

  John’s heart wavered at her story. Were there really such things as Prophane colonists? He only knew of stories about maniacal, war-mongering Prophane. He’d never heard tell of a civilian Prophane ship.

  “That was what, like thirty years ago?” John asked. “How did you survive?”

  “The young marine officer in charge of the boarding action, Lieutenant Ikei Matsumura, found me. Our colony ship was well armed and had ignored communication attempts, destroying three Humaniti Navy ships before we were boarded.”

  “Tough colonists,” John remarked.

  “Yeah, I’m not the only Prophane good at killing. So you can understand why the commanding officer of the patrol group wasn’t in a forgiving mood.”

  “Yet you survived?”

  “Barely. Lieutenant Matsumura disobeyed the order to take no prisoners, instead ordering his marines to stand down when they found me in my parents’ quarters.”

  “An Old Empire Navy captain ordered the slaughter of civilians? What kind of insane order is that?” John gasped, wondering if Voide was relaying some type of hoax to make him look naive.

  “It is the kind given by a captain who has had a lot of his buddies ripped to bits by the few other Prophane ships they had encountered without so much as a hello in response to hails. For the Prophane, there are no civilians. Every adult is a combatant.”

  At least this latest revelation helped to reconcile Voide’s story with what he knew about Humaniti’s history of encounters with the Prophane Ascendency.

  “But you weren’t an adult. Surely murdering infants couldn’t have been a legal order.”

  Voide scoffed. “You think some vengeance-minded officer cared about legal? Legal or not, disobeying orders gets young officers court martialed, which is exactly what happened to Lieutenant Matsumura.”

  “Was he found guilty?” John asked, reeling at the revelation that such injustice might exist within the Empire of Humaniti.

  “No, but it didn’t matter. Even after a court martial found that he rightfully disobeyed an unlawful order, his reenlistment was denied. Despite an otherwise stellar service record, he was issued a general discharge rather than an honorable one. No further pay, no military benefits.”

  John mentally connected the dots with Molon’s introduction in their first meeting. The truth clicked as he put the pieces together.

  “In our first meeting, Molon introduced you as Yasu Matsumura, I assume that surname is no coincidence?”

  “You are a quick one, you are,” Voide replied, snapping back into her sarcastic tone.

  John choked back his response to her sarcasm. He was on a trail here, and didn’t want to do anything that might break the momentum. As he mulled over what she had said, John spotted a potential hole in her story that once again raised suspicions that he was being led on.

  “But Lieutenant Matsumura was a marine serving aboard an Empire Navy ship. Even if he chose to resist the order, how could he smuggle you aboard and protect you from a bloodthirsty captain?”

  For the first time since their conversation started, the sharp edge dropped out of Voide’s tone. She sounded pensive.

  “He never did tell me how he hid me or kept me alive until he could smuggle me off that ship. I suspect cooperation from loyal men under his command had a lot to do with it, but he would never betray their trust, even to me. It cost him his career. Father wasn’t the type of person to take anyone down with him.”

  Father. That was the first time she had used that term. John couldn’t resist attempting to reach a tender emotion buried beneath her gruff exterior.

  “So you consider this huma
n who killed your biological family your father?”

  Surprisingly, John didn’t receive the violent response he half expected. Instead, Voide’s voice remained distant and nostalgic.

  “He raised me. He was the only father I remember.”

  “So you were reared on a human colony?”

  “Yes. Just like Molon, I grew up among humans. Father lived in Adirs sector, subsector O, on the subsector capital world of Asbis. He had me smuggled to his wife, and they reared me as their own daughter after his discharge.”

  John saw an opening to revisit his earlier point.

  “You see, your adoptive father quit being a soldier and still provided for a family. Why is this so strange a possibility for you?”

  With that, John managed to sever whatever rapport he had built with Voide. The sad, thoughtful tone disappeared and she growled her response.

  “You have no idea what you are talking about. Father opened a training studio to teach martial arts and personal combat.”

  “So he was a teacher,” John pressed, refusing to surrender the point.

  “A teacher of war,” she snapped. “His family’s roots went back centuries, to Old Earth. I grew up learning the code of bushido, the way of the warrior.”

  “So that’s where all the super-spy stuff comes from? Some ancient warrior code?”

  John noticed Voide eyeing him as if she was contemplating smacking him in the head again. Fortunately, she chose instead to just ball up her fists and sneer.

  “I said soldier, not spy, you idiot. Father tried to teach me the warrior code of his samurai ancestors, but as I researched this history, I became much more fascinated with another aspect of that ancient culture, the ninja.”

  “Weren’t the ninja spies rather than warriors?” John asked.

  “They were assassins who prized stealth and improvisation as much as the samurai prized honor.”

  “So you rebelled against your father’s teaching, then?”

  John was glad the contact lenses disguising Voide’s Prophane eyes were not weaponized. He could feel her burning gaze as he blundered through the minefield that made up every attempt at conversation with the security chief.

  “I learned and honored everything my father taught me. I just went above and beyond. I studied bushido, but in my free time I focused my efforts on learning many more things that father never intended to teach.”

  Bringing the conversation out of personal and back to practical territory seemed to John the best way to salvage the situation without dragging her into resenting him more deeply.

  “Soldier or spy, you are in a truly unique position, Voide. Why are you so certain there is no way to become a bridge? You understand humans, and even if you could not personally meet with the Prophane due to their hatred of Pariah, you can help human diplomats to the Prophane understand them better. You are living proof our races can co-exist. Maybe God has put you in this place for just such a moment.”

  Voide laughed.

  “From what I know of your God, I doubt he has any plans for humans to reconcile with the Prophane.”

  “What makes you so sure?” John replied, fighting hard to bite back his frustration with Voide’s incessant sarcasm and skepticism. “I have found that with God anything is possible. Might you not be at the center of that plan?”

  Again, John wound up increasing Voide’s ire without quite understanding how he had managed it. Her face took on a look that was half grimace and half the face you make when you find a cupboard full of spoiled food.

  “You’re not pretending, are you?” she snarled.

  “What’s that supposed to mean,” John asked, desperate to understand what he had said that had set her off so badly.

  “You really are this ignorant!” Voide said, shaking her head.

  “Hey!” he responded, having had enough of her insults. “I’m just asking the question. Unless you know everything, you can’t possibly know what God has planned. Do you know everything?”

  “I know this much. I know I am the reason humans understand how much the Prophane hate Pariahs.”

  John took a deep breath. Was this some exaggeration or braggadocio on the part of the security chief? Despite the churning feeling in his gut that Voide wasn’t embellishing, he had to challenge her assertion.

  “Oh come on. Of all the Pariahs Humaniti has captured, somehow you are that special? How do you figure that?”

  Voide took a deep breath before responding. Her calmer tone had returned. All trace of sarcasm was gone from her voice as her eyes focused not on John but somewhere beyond him.

  “I was the first Prophane taken alive that didn’t die within a week. Only Prophane kids younger than around ten years old don’t die in captivity. That’s how the scientists theorized the existence of a Prophane suicide gland, or maybe some type of surgical implant, that is present in adults but not children.”

  “So what in the galaxy does any of that have to do with you discovering this deep-seeded hatred by the Prophane towards Pariahs?”

  “When I grew up, I joined the Empire Navy.”

  “You joined the military that rode your adoptive father out on a rail?”

  “Yeah,” Voide said, scowling. “I did it to try and redeem my father’s family name. I graduated first in my class. I was a recruit fresh out of the academy six years before the Shattering. At that time, the Prophane Ascendency’s advance across the Stygian Rift was pushing the tailward borders of Empire space. I was the weapons officer on the flagship of an assault fleet. We’d been sent to the Lowery Sector to engage a Prophane invasion force that had been capturing planets there.”

  “You don’t mean the Lowery Rout, do you? That’s Empire-wide history, and you are telling me you were there?”

  Voide folded her arms across her chest and rolled her eyes. Her tone was not angry, but John could tell her emotions were simmering just below the surface. If he wanted to keep this rapport up, he’d need to be a little more careful how he phrased things.

  “Doubtless you have heard the romanticized, fairy-tale version of the battle Humaniti has dubbed the Lowery Rout. Do you want to know what really happened?”

  “Absolutely,” John said.

  He was focused on Voide’s every word and suddenly found it hard to concentrate on keeping their CUV on the road. Being a history buff, John loved when situations arose that gave him the opportunity to talk with people who were part of the events. Somehow the personal accounts never seemed to reconcile completely with the official versions of events.

  “We had reports that the Prophane were tearing their way through a large cluster of worlds in Lowery subsector J, the Dotrend subsector. We dropped out of voidspace in the Teklu system, a slightly more remote system with a major Empire Navy base. We thought to levy additional ships from there and gather intel on where the Prophane were last spotted.”

  “Teklu? That was the system where the Lowery Rout happened.”

  “Yes. We arrived to find the Naval Base at Teklu destroyed and ourselves badly outnumbered. The Prophane ships were in perfect formation to wipe us out, like they somehow knew where we would be jumping into the system. Previous encounters showed the Prophane to be disciplined and cunning enemies, and given their superior command of voidspace tactics, retreat wasn’t really an option.”

  “Well, you survived,” John replied. “So, they couldn’t have hated you too badly.”

  He was feeling a bit snarky that this tale was dragging out without any hint of the evidence that Voide was the catalyst for Prophane hatred of Pariahs. If she was leading him on, he was determined to call her bluff.

  “Listen, pale,” Voide answered, her invective proving that this was no joking matter to her. “Do you want to hear the story or not?”

  “Okay,” John blushed. “I’m sorry. You were saying?”

  “Our CO tried hailing the Prophane, hoping to negotiate a surrender and avoid a complete slaughter. The Prophane had never, in two decades, answered a hail or shown any int
erest in communicating whatsoever, but the captain was desperate enough to try anything.”

  “Did it work? Did they answer?”

  “We got an answer, all right,” Voide said with that sly tone of sarcasm creeping back into her voice. “My weapons position was located just forward of the captain’s seat. I was in clear view during the broadcast hail. The Prophane didn’t give any communication acknowledgement to the hail, but as soon as it went out, their fleet completely broke formation and launched a suicide run straight at our flagship; you know, the ship with me on it.”

  “Suicide run?” John asked.

  “Yeah. They went berserk, abandoning their crossfire formation and every ship made a run straight for our fleet.”

  “Why would they do that? I’m no military strategist, but surrendering a superior tactical position makes no sense.”

  “And enlightenment dawns,” Voide said with a smirk.

  “Knock it off,” John said, chafing at her implied insult to his intelligence but finding he was so caught up in her story he no longer cared if she was just making it up. “What happened next?”

  “Fortunately, our captain was a seasoned naval officer. He quickly recognized that the pattern and focus of their all-out attack run was our flagship. Beginning a steady withdrawal to draw the Prophane forward, he ordered the rest of the fleet to arrange themselves into an extended gauntlet of crossfire between the Prophane fleet’s starting position and our flagship.”

  “The tactic worked?”

  “It was surreal,” Voide recounted, her voice transforming into a far-off tone of recalled memories. “The Prophane took a few pot shots at ships that strayed too close, but otherwise they didn’t even engage in evasive maneuvers to avoid the crossfire. They just charged full speed after the flagship firing missiles, blasters, slug-throwers, and everything else they had, at or beyond maximum effective range, in single-minded pursuit of destroying one ship—the one with me aboard.”

  “From what I remember of the account,” John said, raising an eyebrow. “The Lowery Rout was a decisive tactical victory for Humaniti. The commanding officer was awarded the Galactic Naval Cross for combat victory, and the Empire Navy was later able to cut through the Lowery sector and push back the Prophane advance after wiping out that fleet, at least for a year or so.”