The Sac'a'rith

by Vincent Trigili

  I wondered what he meant by “serious training”, because the last few years had surely been no walk in the park. When I reached the bridge he said, “Strap yourself in; we are about to jump.”

  Once we had cleared jump space, I saw in front of us a large, obsolete-looking space station. I guessed it to be a remote trading outpost, no doubt with exactly the sort of inhabitants whose company Donovan would have enjoyed.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Petra 37c, an old mining outpost,” he replied.

  “But I do not see anything to mine,” I said.

  “They mined it all out and moved on. The station has become a storage depot run by the local government,” he said.

  “So what’s the job then?” I asked.

  “That station has a problem we are being paid to solve,” he said as he punched some codes into the communications array and began to approach the station.

  Narcion slowly drew close to the station and connected to one of the docking arms. As we docked I felt a cold chill run down my spine. I involuntarily reacted to it, and Narcion said, “That is a good sign.”

  I could not think of any way in which I would interpret that reaction as a ‘good sign’, but decided to wait and see what he was up to.

  “Follow me,” he said as he made for the exit hatch. Once there he donned his full battle gear, which told me something major must be going on because he almost never wore armor, even into battle. He complained it would slow him down.

  As I got my own gear ready I said, “Before we go out there, I’d like to know a little more about what we are up against.”

  “This is one of those cases where the less you know beforehand the better off you are. Let’s just say that on this station there are some creatures we need to remove.”

  “Creatures the military could not handle?”

  “Yes, but we can. Come,” he said as he swiftly clicked on his helmet and left the ship.

  I followed him off once I had my own helmet secured and drew my weapons. I had no idea what I was walking into and needed to be ready to react. He paused at the bottom of the exit ramp and said, “They are close. They know we are here, but they do not yet know who we are. This is good.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “In the corridors and heading towards us. This area is too open for a fight. Let’s find a more secure position,” he said and rushed off.

  My massive legs and superior gait made it easy for me to match his raw speed, but his agility made it very hard to keep up with him through the twists and turns of the corridors. Soon he found a narrow corridor with a dead end and quickly set up some devices all around the area.

  “This spot will work perfectly,” he said. He walked a short distance away from the area and stood there, waiting for our attackers to come.

  The location he chose had nowhere to retreat to. That meant either that he was confident of being able to take this enemy, or that he felt retreat was not an option in this case. I really hoped it was the former, but feared it was the latter.

  Soon some strange, lumbering, humanoid beasts came into sight and slowly made their way towards us. Narcion did not move at all for a long time, until all of them seemed to have come into view; then he pulled out his weapons and began to fire rapidly into the mass of advancing creatures. I joined him and slowly we mowed them down. The devices he had planted along the corridor sent waves of fire into the crowd of beasts, helping to reduce their numbers and filling the corridor with thick black smoke. The station’s environmental controls struggled to clear the air, but thankfully succeeded well enough for the filters in my armor to handle it. If they had failed I would have had to fall back on the oxygen tanks on the suit, but they were limited in size and I did not want to think about the difficulty of fighting in this smoke if they ran out.

  When the beasts were all dealt with, I said, “It seems to me that the military could have handled that easily enough.”

  “Possibly, but that's not our target,” he said. He kept looking down the corridor as if he were waiting for something. I tried to guess what it was he was looking for, but all I could see was rapidly clearing smoke and piles of bodies.

  “Then what is?” I asked.

  In answer, a being of some kind came into view wearing a long, dark, ragged robe, its face hidden by a deep cowl. The robe did not quite reach the ground, and neither did its feet; in fact, I was not at all sure if it actually had feet. It just hovered there a few inches off the floor and seemed to lock its gaze on Narcion. I could not make out any eyes, but still somehow I had the impression that it was looking hard into Narcion’s eyes as if trying to win a staring contest. As they had their standoff, two more of the creatures appeared and one of them locked its gaze on me.

  Fear rocked my body and I turned my eyes away. I could not hold its gaze without my body shaking in fear. Narcion seemed unaffected and stared on. Soon all three of them were focused on him. I raised my weapon, ready to shoot, but Narcion said, “Don’t waste your time. That gun can’t hurt them.”

  I looked at his hands and saw that he had put his blasters away and drawn his knives, so I did the same. Since my armor covered my hands completely, I could not use my claws. I had never used knives in a real fight before, as they seemed clumsy compared to my claws, but I was grateful for them now. I took a deep breath and tried to steady my nerves. I would need a clear mind for this.

  Looking at the creatures, I wondered what in Zalith’s name they could be. Eventually the standoff ended and Narcion called out, “We are the Sac’a’rith, and we are sending you back to the abyss from which you came!” and charged them.

  Quickly I followed him, choosing the creature on the right as my target. They spread out quickly as we charged, no doubt hoping to get one of us between two of them. Narcion leaped forward as we closed the distance and landed on one of the creatures.

  I lost track of his fight as I turned to face one of the others. As I approached, it swiped a translucent skeletal hand straight at my face. Moving quickly as Narcion had taught me, I stepped to a thirty-degree angle and used my arm to parry its attack while jabbing it with one of my knives. I hit something hard, but whatever it was it gave under the blow and the creature fell back. Before it could recover, I spun my tail around and slammed it hard into its chest, sending it flying into the wall. As I finished my spin I swung my other knife out, slashing up and across its body.

  The creature screamed the most bone-chilling scream I had ever heard as it collapsed and faded away. I continued my spin and turned to see Narcion finish off his first target with a clean swipe across its throat. As he did that the last creature leaped for him, but he must have heard something because he dived away and expertly fired off two kicks, which sent the creature reeling.

  Not wanting to miss an opportunity, I leaped forward over Narcion with both of my knives in front of me, crashing into its body. My knives plunged deep into whatever its body was made of, but just before it died its skeletal hand swept across my shoulder, ripping a chunk out of my body armor. I felt my whole arm go numb from the wound as it screamed and died.

  “Are you all right?” asked Narcion.

  “I can’t feel my arm, but besides that I’m okay,” I said.

  “Let me see,” he said. He took a look at my shoulder and then pulled a bottle out of his pouch. “Here, drink this. It will neutralize the poison. You should be much better in a few hours.”

  I chugged the drink and then said, “Is that all of them?”

  “Yes. The military will be happy to have their base back,” he said.

  “So why could they not do what we just did?” I asked.

  “They tried and those creatures turned them into the monsters we killed off before the creatures attacked. Make no mistake: you are Sac’a’rith now, and that gives you some advantages over normal warriors,” he said.

  I looked over at the pile of corpses we created and wondered what a Sac’a’rith was,
but I had a question that I felt needed to be asked regardless of how sure I was of the answer. The real problem was that I did not like the answer I knew I would get. “Are these the dead things you said it was our job to kill?”

  “Those were just empty bodies that were reanimated. Now that their creators are dead all the animated corpses around the station will cease to function.”

  “So are you telling me we are presently on a station full of dead bodies?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that it’s full, but there are plenty around. That is not our problem, though. Let’s return to our ship and collect our payment.”

  I did not want to delay that plan any longer so I asked no more questions. We were surrounded by fallen men and women, and he barely seemed to notice them; they might as well have been boxes for all he seemed to care.

  Once we were clear of the station, he called up his contact with the Phareon government and said, “Mission accomplished. You are free to use your station again.”

  “And our men?” he asked.

  “Dead, long dead before we arrived,” said Narcion.

  “How do I know you did not kill them in the process?” he asked.

  “The security surveillance systems on the station will show exactly what happened,” he said.

  “Then once we have a task force out there to verify your claim we can send payment. Meanwhile, please proceed to your next target … ” he began.

  “No,” interrupted Narcion.

  “No?” asked the man.

  “Not until I am paid in full for the work we have already accomplished,” Narcion responded.

  The man at the other end of the conversation stared at Narcion as if trying to determine how serious he was. Eventually he broke the silence and said, “Very well. We will mobilize a team to investigate your claim as soon as possible. I will contact you when I know more,” and cut the channel.

  Narcion chuckled and said, “And that is why I get most of my payment up front. They have no intention of paying us any more money.”

  “But what about this other mission he has for you?” I asked.

  “Well, after they’ve watched the video and seen how bad things were on that station they will change their tune and call us back. I will then, of course, raise our price,” he said with a grin.

  I shook my head and said, “I am glad you handle all that. Now tell me: how exactly did those dead men get up and fight us?”

  “Zah’rak, your body is basically a very advanced robotic suit. Your brain is a supercomputer that sends electrical signals to the rest of your body. These signals tell your body to do whatever the brain asks it. They are fairly simple and easy to reproduce, so to reanimate a corpse you just send the right electrical impulses down through the body and its muscles will react,” he said.

  “So those were really just bodies we were fighting: organic robots, after a fashion?” I asked.

  “Exactly. They were not alive in any sense of the word. They were just being controlled like puppets.” He paused, looked at my shoulder and said, “That same principle was used to numb your arm. They have a powerful neurotoxin that blocks the electrical messages from your brain. Without the antidote it would eventually have traveled through your bloodstream and spread to your entire body.”

  No wonder he took these creatures so seriously. “But how did it get through my armor so easily? This is the best armor I have ever seen, and I would have expected their hands to bounce off.”

  “Their fingers are coated in an extremely hard material that can cut through just about anything. I had hoped this new battledress would hold up better but, alas, it did not,” he said.

  “Then how do we defend ourselves against them? Had there only been one or two more we could not have taken them all without one of us getting hurt,” I said.

  “Unfortunately, I don’t know. I have been searching for replacement armor since … well, for a very long time and this was the best I have yet found. No matter; we will just keep searching,” he said.

  “Replacement armor? Then you used to have something that worked?” I asked.

  “I did, but unfortunately it did not stand the test of time,” he said.

  “Well, can’t you just go back to wherever you got that set and get another?” I asked.

  “If only it were that simple,” he said. “That place is long gone. I do know of another place that might be able to help, but I am not positive yet that they can make it.”

  “It seems worth a shot. Who are they?” I asked.

  “They call themselves the Wizard Kingdom. They are way over on the opposite side of the galaxy from where we are now. It would take years to get there, and by then I fear this region will have fallen to whoever is behind these attacks,” he answered.

  I sat there for some time digesting what he had said, trying to get my mind around all this new information. There was clearly a lot of information about him that I still did not know. I had a feeling that this knowledge was probably beyond my understanding right now.

  “Come, let’s get you a new suit of armor. Regardless of how poorly it protected you today, it is still some of the best armor money can buy,” he said, making for the cargo bay.

  Once I was outfitted in my new armor Narcion said, “I don’t know about you, but I am starved after all that,” and headed towards the galley.

  As we walked, I thought about the battle we had fought. He had said as we exited the ship that it would be better if I did not know what I was about to face when we entered the fight. At the time I had been annoyed by this, but thinking back on it I saw that he was probably right. Had he told me we were about to board the tomb of a space station where the dead continue to move and attack, I might not have followed him on board. Even now, I was not sure I wanted to follow him for the next adventure with the dead.

  My arm was just now starting to feel like it belonged to me again. It was still slow to respond, and as it healed it began to hurt; not a sharp pain, but rather a long, dull, throbbing ache. The ease with which that creature had defeated my armor and rendered my arm useless was very disturbing.

  Chapter Four

  Narcion wanted me to rest over the next few days. It took several more doses, two each day, of the antitoxin before my arm was usable again. During this time we only performed light drills which involved more tactical thinking than action. He wanted me to focus on learning how to read a fight in order to pick the best targets and find the best positions from which to fight.

  During one of those training sessions I asked, “Narcion, why did you say it was a good sign that I had chills when we approached the station?”

  “Because it validates what I first sensed about you. You are the one,” was all he said.

  I tried to probe him more on that topic but he just said I was not ready yet to know more and I needed to learn patience.

  Eventually Narcion’s contact with the government got in touch with us again. When he appeared on the screen he said, “The report from the station collaborates your version of events.”

  “As I knew it would. So payment will be made immediately?” asked Narcion.

  “How is it that you two alone were able to overpower these creatures when a station filled with soldiers was defeated?” he asked.

  “You can watch the tapes if you want to know how we did it. You have other stations with similar problems. If you want me to help you with them, you will need to complete payment for this mission,” said Narcion.

  “How do I know you are not scamming me somehow? You killed with only your knives creatures who seem immune to any of our attacks. That seems suspicions, you have to agree,” he said.

  “No. I have told you before. We are Sac’a’rith and this is what we do. Now, do you want our help or not?” Narcion asked.

  “We have sent a group of magi to Petra 29. They should be capable of handling these creatures, don't you think?” he asked.

  “Obviously you do not think
so, if you are calling me for help,” Narcion said.

  The contact sat there a moment as if debating what to say next. I am sure he was not used to dealing with someone so confident in his power. Narcion negotiated from a position of supreme control, as if knowing he held all the cards. As a government military official, Narcion’s contact is likely is used to being the one in command and was unsure how to handle men like Narcion.

  The official pressed some buttons on his terminal and said, “Your payment has been made. The magi that we sent to Petra 29 have been unable to defeat their attackers. They have succeeded in building a safe area deep in the heart of the station where all the survivors currently remain. Go and assist their efforts to retake the station and we will pay you under the same terms as your last mission.”

  “No. That is not how it works,” said Narcion.

  “What is the problem?” he asked.

  “I do not assist anyone. If we go, I take complete unlimited command over the situation. If I need their help, I will contact them and they will assist us; never the other way round. Is that clear?” Narcion said.

  “Fine; just get there and rescue our people,” said the government agent.

  “I do not perform rescues. However, I will eliminate the problem, which will have the same effect in this case. Just to be absolutely clear, I am taking no responsibility for their lives. We will eliminate the problem, and your people will live or die of their own accord,” said Narcion.

  I could tell the agent was learning to really dislike dealing with Narcion. “Fine. Whatever. Just get out there and do your job.” After that he cut the channel.

  “Um, if a bunch of wizards went out there and could not beat them, why do we think we can?” I asked.

  “No, not wizards; magi. Big difference,” he said.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “The title ‘wizard’ implies someone who has been trained and has studied the art. We do not yet have anyone out here like that. All we have out this way are people born with a raw power which they have no idea how to use. The nearest school for them to attend is Alpha Academy, which is clear across the galaxy in the Wizard’s Kingdom. Being left to their own devices, magi out here typically learn a couple of tricks through trial and error and ply their trade based on those tricks.”