“Wow, you look great, Letho!” Deacon said, placing a hand on Letho’s shoulder and squeezing.
“Been doing the Tarsi thing for a while now. Guess I picked up a little muscle mass along the way,” Letho replied.
“Dude, you are ripped! What have they been feeding you down here? And before I tell you my story, I think it’s only fair that you tell me what’s been going on with you. I haven’t heard from you in months! No uCom, no electrotext. What the hell, bruin?”
“You’re right. Well, you see…”
“Let us discuss this while we walk,” Bayorn interjected. “The ceremony will be coming to its close very soon.”
“Hey, who’s the big fluffy?” Deacon asked.
“My name is Bayorn. I am a Tarsi from the Centennial Fulcrum,” Bayorn said, extending his hand.
“You don’t say,” said Deacon, his eyebrows curving again, a wry smile arcing across his face. Deacon took the Tarsi’s hand and they shook.
“What’s a Tarsi?” Deacon asked.
“I am,” Bayorn said.
“I thought you guys were called slave bears,” Deacon said.
Bayorn hissed through his teeth, and the edges of his smile drooped a little.
“Yeah, they don’t like that so much,” Letho said.
“As if there was any way I could have possibly known that,” Deacon said.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Deacon had been on a supply run to a nearby Fulcrum station, their trajectories into the deep, dark void entwined. He had returned to the Centennial Fulcrum station upon receiving a nearly unintelligible distress call from the station’s navigation center.
Deacon’s boss had been screaming something into the com device about interstellar zombies that consumed human flesh. Deacon had responded, dubious of his supervisor’s claims. He told Letho and Bayorn that he had seen the invading ship with his own eyes during his approach vector. Deacon described the ship in great detail, relaying data and features shrouded in jargon that had no meaning to Letho and Bayorn, but which were apparently of great import to a seasoned pilot.
“The ship was weird. Some alien design, like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Deacon said.
Letho envisioned an enormous black shark, circling them even now, waiting for a chance to strike again. Perhaps the first attack had been of an investigatory nature. Letho shuddered, imagining another attack, having to face Alastor again, and that awful Jolly Roger monstrosity.
Letho waited for the copilot to chide him, but the voice didn’t come. He felt flushed, and the familiar quickness came over him as he pictured Alastor’s hangman’s face.
Let them come, he thought.
Letho looked up at Bayorn, whose face darkened with a momentary scowl. Perhaps he was having similar visions.
“They seemed to be on their way out when I flew up,” Deacon said.
“Any way to know where they went?” Letho asked.
“Funny you should ask. I pinged ’em with a tracking device just before the ship disappeared. I figured ‘what the hell, what’s the worst that could happen? The device might bounce off the ship’s hull, or it might be un-trackable.’ Sure enough, the tracker stuck, and I got a good signal.”
“No shit? Incredible, Deacon,” Letho said.
“I shit you not. Wait, what are you thinking, Letho?” Deacon asked.
“We’ve got friends on that ship, all of us. They took a lot of folks, and killed some Tarsi,” Letho answered. He stopped, gasping, placing a hand to his chest.
How could I have forgotten?
“Deacon, have you spoken to Sila?” he asked.
Realization dawned on Deacon’s face. “No, you?”
Letho extended his hand in a terse gesture, clicking his fingers together in exaggeration. “No uCom, remember?” Letho snarled.
“Easy, friend. I’m sorry, I forgot,” Deacon replied, his eyes downcast.
Letho took a deep breath, and placed a hand on Deacon’s shoulder. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. Could you try hailing her on your uCom?”
Deacon nodded and conjured his own uCom. He was unable to connect to Sila’s uCom for a voice conversation.
“Let me try an electrotext,” he said.
There was no response.
“All right, let’s try this. uCom, find Sila Khai,” Deacon said.
“Unable to find Sila Khai. uCom connection is inactive,” the voice replied.
They were all thinking it, but no one wanted to verbalize the horrible truth.
“She’s probably just in the shower or something,” Deacon said, placing his hand on Letho’s shoulder.
Letho’s eyes darkened, and he realized he had been biting his lip when a little bit of blood trickled down onto his chin. The wound healed instantly, but not without a twinge of pain. Letho pistoned his hand forward with incredible speed, bending a wall strut and causing several rivets to ricochet down the small hallway.
Deacon and Bayorn said nothing, even when Letho collapsed on the floor, clutching his forearm, the veins in his neck standing out like taut cords. His face took on a bright red hue, and a rope of spittle began to fall from his lips.
And then it was over. He stood up and wiped the spit from his lip, eyeing his compatriots with a strange look in his eye, a look that neither Bayorn nor Deacon could decipher. Was it fear? Contempt? Bayorn was struck with the impression that he was looking into the eyes of a stranger, an outsider who had invaded his Eursan friend’s mind for the briefest of moments.
“I’m okay, guys,” Letho gasped. “I’m serious. You can stop staring at me.”
“Letho, you just bent a metalloy girder with your bare hands,” Deacon said, eyes wide.
“I know, and it hurt like a son of a lutch,” Letho said.
“Let me see your hand,” Deacon said, not waiting for a response. He grabbed Letho’s hand and turned it over. He squeezed Letho’s forearm.
“Does this hurt?” he asked.
“No. But if anyone walks up and sees us holding hands, it’s going to be a little hard to explain, don’t you think?” Letho asked, slapping Deacon’s hands away.
“No cuts or bruises… Letho, your hand should be pulp right now,” Deacon said.
“I know,” Letho said, waving his friend off. “Listen, a lot has changed. There’ll be time to explain, but now is not that time. We have to find Sila.”
“We can search the station after the Elder’s final ceremony,” said Bayorn.
“No,” Letho said.
The ambient temperature seemed to drop by several degrees. Bayorn had no difficulty reading the cold, thousand-yard stare that fell upon Letho’s countenance.
“She is not here. She’s with Alastor. We’re going after him when the Elder’s ceremony is over,” Letho said.
Bayorn and Deacon were unsure who Letho was speaking to, for he stared at the empty air before him as though Alastor stood there himself.
Deacon spoke first. “Letho, it would be a suicide mission. You can’t really be thinking about fighting them in close quarters, on their own ship, no less.”
“You would just leave Sila to them? What about the other citizens they took?” Letho said, regarding his old friend Deacon with that same cold-steel gaze. “They have to pay for what they’ve done. Even if I do die, it will be with my hands around one of those bastard’s necks. I won’t stand by and do nothing while my friends are dying.”
“Well, if you’re going on a suicide mission, you aren’t going without me, bruin,” Deacon said at last. “You just found yourself a pilot. Consider me hired.”
FIFTEEN - Implements of War
The Tarsi were gathered in one of the egress ports at the bottom of the Centennial Fulcrum. Zedock Wartimer had seen to it that they would not be bothered; the cavernous metal room that would normally be awash with the ambient roar of men at work was covered instead in a funerary veil of silence. There would be no whoosh of embarking cargo ships, nor the salty spray of coarse epithets on thi
s day.
Fintran’s sarcophagus lay in the center of a circle made up of the smaller, less-ornate caskets that belonged to other fallen Tarsi. And among those were many even smaller caskets—those that belonged to deceased station inspectors.
Fintran’s vessel had been crafted from scavenged metal plating and rivets, and was adorned with gold wire, chips of glass, and plastic from non-functioning computers and glowlights. They had been attached with such care that, save for close scrutiny, they appeared to be the sparkling gems that adorned the sarcophagi of ancient kings. Letho’s eyes welled with tears as he saw Fintran’s gold dragon, the one that had adorned the table at a much happier gathering, in a place of prominence near where his head lay.
Someone had carved Fintran’s visage in relief into pressed layers of wood that looked as though they might have once been tabletops. Letho ran the cuff of his jumpsuit under his runny nose.
There was nothing left to say. The legacy of Fintran stretched out around the tight circle of caskets in the thick gathering of Tarsi standing shoulder to shoulder. All of them had been restored to their true state by his and Letho’s sacrifice. The room was thick with low sobs and suppressed but heartfelt groans, but there were no hopeless wails or gnashing of teeth. A sense of peace permeated everything. Fintran had lived a long life, had molded the multi-generational gathering of Tarsi with his wizened hand. And now he had gone to place where he would not suffer, where the bend in his back and the deterioration of his body would trouble him no more.
Bayorn and Maka began to move the coffins into the airlock. Letho went to Fintran’s casket and placed his hand on the sculpture of his face. The Tarsi artisan had somehow captured the glimmer of Fintran’s eyes—the eyes of a being that had journeyed across a great sea of time with his faculties remarkably intact.
Letho felt fur-swaddled hands enwrap his shoulders. He turned to see his brothers, Bayorn and Maka, and found solace in their firm grasp.
“It is time, Letho,” Maka said.
Letho nodded, sniffling a little. He looked for reproach in the eyes of his Tarsi brothers, but found none. He noticed that the fur around their eyes and along the inward part of their snouts was soaked with their own tears.
“I’ll help,” Letho said.
Together they wheeled the great sarcophagus toward the airlock, the last to be moved into place. When the work was done, they exited the austere white light of the airlock. Zedock was there at the control panel, watching Bayorn with great care. At last, when Letho and Maka were at his side, Bayorn nodded toward Zedock. Maka dropped his head, emitting a low and thrumming sob from the cavern of his chest, grasping Letho’s shoulder. The pressure compressed Letho’s muscles a bit much for comfort, but he said nothing, nor moved to break away from Maka’s grip.
The toothed doors of the airlock simultaneously rose from the floor and descended from the ceiling, coming together with a metallic thud that rang in Letho’s head for some time. Zedock depressed a large red button, opening the outer hatch. And with no fanfare, no hail of fiery arrows to set fire to their final vessels, Letho bid farewell to the worldly remains of Fintran, his fellow Tarsi warriors, and the brave station inspectors who had fought alongside them.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
That evening, as the Tarsi lumbered in silence toward their dwelling beneath the shining panels and walkways of the above, Letho felt himself drawn in another direction.
He wandered, letting his footfalls take him wherever they may on sheer motor instinct, as if his subconscious mind knew where it was going while his conscious self did not. He wandered the streets of the Envirodome’s town center, marveling at the contrasts he saw. Some buildings were completely untouched, store facades and public buildings neat and crisp, while others had succumbed to the assault, crumbled under the weight of their own support structures as the flames and gunfire had reduced their structural integrity past the tipping point.
Nothing to see here. Please return to your regularly scheduled program, he thought.
He passed the nightclub that he had visited with Deacon so long ago. He thought of his former self, slovenly, like a ship carrying only excess and self-indulgent trinkets.
How things had changed. He had descended into the Labyrine like Theolus, where he had slain a monstrosity; it had been he himself, a pitiful, malformed golem, and the only beasts he had found there were creatures of boundless wisdom and love.
He thought of his former boss Baran Gall, and felt remorse like an asp biting his chest as he replayed the shameful moments before his fall. That boy, for surely there was no other word for his former incarnation, had been so full of indignation, such unworthy righteousness—and he had been so wrong.
And now Baran Gall was dead. Alastor’s first blood on the Centennial Fulcrum.
He sought out Baran Gall’s kin with his mind, and sent kind thoughts their way, wishing goodwill and wholeness to the man’s family, wherever they might be. It was the closest he had come to a prayer in his life.
He chuckled to himself: a chuffing, self-effacing sound.
What’s next, Letho? Gonna become a card-carrying member of the Holy Rollers’ Union?
“I will avenge you, Baran Gall,” Letho said aloud.
Letho found himself crunching over broken glass and into the Civil Services Building. He navigated around the overturned desks in the security command center. A lone man sat behind one desk, staring at a blank computer screen. His shoulders were slumped, his hair a disheveled mess, rising in wild waves off his scalp in some places, plastered down hard in others with dried sweat and grime.
The man rose from his desk, gave Letho a leery, but not unkind glare, and they shook hands.
“How’s everything going?” Letho asked.
“Well, the town center is beat to hell and a lot of apartments got tore up pretty bad, but we’re still limpin’ along. Good news is the shutters out front are keepin’ the air in until the self-healing process completes. It’s a marvel of good old-fashioned technology, ain’t it?”
Neither of them made eye contact; Letho had his hands on his hips, staring at the floor as if it had suddenly become very interesting, and Zedock’s own hands were tucked deep in the pockets of his slacks as he leaned back. Sighs and a clearing of the throat were exchanged, and the conversation seemed to be veering toward a discussion of the “weather” in the Envirodome.
“Whatcha got for me?” Zedock asked, clapping his hands against his thighs.
Letho pulled up a rolling chair and sat next to the chief’s desk, propping his boots up on the corner. The chief shot him a warning glance, and he took them down.
“We’re going after the people that were taken.”
Zedock shook his head and chuckled. “Son, that’s the craziest damn thing I ever heard. You must have stones on you the size of grapefruits. My hat’s off to you. Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”
“No. Those people need me. And—there’s this girl,” Letho said, face red.
“Well, now the picture’s startin’ to clear up a little,” Zedock said, pretending to adjust the picture on a nonexistent broadcast screen. “It’s always about a girl, isn’t it? Believe me, son. Your old friend Zedock did some dumb things in his day in the name of chivalry.” Zedock’s eyes became momentarily wistful. “But I’m drifting off topic. What’s your plan?”
“A pilot friend of mine saw the ship as they were leaving, managed to plant a tracking device. They aren’t too far away.”
Zedock pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. “Don’t that seem strange to you? Seems like you’d want to hightail it outta town once the shootout was done. Least that’s how they did it in the movies, anyways.”
Zedock’s persona suddenly made sense to Letho: the easy swagger, the mustache, the practiced drawl. He, too, had seen those movies. In those movies the bad guys were hard to distinguish from the good: they had the same steely eyes, craggy faces, and thriftiness to their speech, as if each word were chosen for minimal utteranc
e and maximum impact. The only real difference between the two archetypes that Letho could see was whether they were the ones taking the loot or protecting it.
“Well sir, I sure could use something that shoots real bullets,” Letho said. “I pretty much brought fists to a gunfight the last time, and as you can see it didn’t work out so well for me.”
“I don’t know about that. After all, here you stand. I wouldn’t be surprised to see you walk from one airlock to the next before long.”
Letho only nodded.
“Listen, Letho. I want those people back just as bad as you do. I want the bad guys to suffer. But I just don’t know if it’s worth the risk. It seems like taking them on in their own ship—their home—is a little crazy. Is it the right thing to do? Probably. Is it the smart thing to do? Nope.
“But I have learned that when a man has resolve in his eyes like I see in yours right now, it’s better for an old-timer like me to step aside and let the man do what he’s going to do. Besides, it’s not like I can talk you out of it at this point, right?”
Letho only smiled back at him, shaking his head from side to side.
“Didn’t think so,” Zedock said. “Well, I do have something for you, young bruin.”
The chief undid the clasp from his holster and removed his sidearm. The precise, deft movement with which he extracted the handgun betrayed the many times this motion had been repeated.
“I want you to have this. My pop gave this to me, and his before him. This one’s special, made on Eursus,” he said, his eyes telling Letho that he was lost in a moment somewhere else altogether.
Letho took the gun and marveled at its cold, steel beauty. He felt its weight, looked in wonder at its careworn patina. Across the side of the gun, the maker’s brand was etched:
BLACK BEAR AUTOMATIC - .50 CAL, 1908-X1
“I don’t have a dad, or a mom for that matter,” Letho said, the walls of his throat feeling a little thicker, slower.
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