The Scourge hadn’t had it all their own way. More than a dozen attackers lay dead near the tent, having succumbed to the steadfast resistance of Olvanjie’s eunuchs. But even the Jivool had fallen in the end.
After checking the area was clear, Jenkins kicked over one of the murderers and stared into their face. This one was a Zuul. There were other races here too, all humanoid. They were clothed in unremarkable jackets, pants, smocks, overalls, and boots. The light combat armor they wore carried no identifying insignia. One was even a Human man.
They could have fitted right in anywhere in the Spine Nebula, almost as if they were random people possessed by a sudden desire to kill and destroy. Perhaps that was the truth of it. It would explain why the bandits had abandoned their dead to rot; not something any military unit with pride would do lightly.
Inside the trading tent, Jenkins groaned as he took in a scene of utter carnage. Shattered bodies. Blood. A Bakulu shell cracked into a hundred pieces and sprayed over the cushioned floor.
Olvanjie’s tent had been richly decorated. Gold, silver, red diamonds, even the shell of the Bakulu was coated in thousands of credits worth of adornments. All of it had been left. Whoever had come here, their purpose had not been to loot Shaloyl-Huk of its significant wealth. They hadn’t even destroyed the entire settlement. Despite the abundance of bodies, they numbered fewer than the people Jenkins had seen before he left for the starport. Many of its inhabitants would be still cowering in the dirt outside the town, wondering when it would be safe to return.
The only clear purpose of the Scourge was to sow terror.
His dark musings were interrupted by movement toward the back of the tent.
Jenkins raised his Nock and advanced on the sound, his trigger finger burning to unleash the fearsome weapon.
“It would be an irony if it fell to my friend to finish the task begun by those killers.”
The words were Zuparti, but that didn’t mean it was Olvanjie speaking. He edged closer to a pile of Jivool corpses and the voice emanating from beneath it.
“Was I being overly subtle for you, Human?” snapped the Zuparti. “Put down the damned gun, Lenworth. I need my slate and three minutes of your time, not a barrage of shells.”
Jenkins took a last look around to satisfy himself they were alone. He safed and slung his Nock so he could lift the bloodied Jivool torso pinning Olvanjie.
His heart leapt as he watched his friend crawl out, but then he saw she’d taken multiple bullet wounds. Frankly, he didn’t understand how the trade mistress could still be alive.
“Benefit of extreme wealth, Jenkins,” Olvanjie explained. “I avoided the extravagance I could have enjoyed because I did not wish to make myself a target. It seems I have failed in that endeavor, but on the inside, I spared no expense. I am nanite hardened and have multiple redundant auxiliary organs.”
“Then you will live?”
Olvanjie let out a low growl. “Only, for a brief coda, it appears. Long enough to see your ugly Human face. My pinplants say I have five to ten minutes of life remaining.”
Jenkins reached into his greatcoat and brought out a trauma kit.
“No,” said Olvanjie. “There’s nothing you could do my nanites are not already doing better. In any case, I have more important affairs to conduct in my final minutes. I need to explain something to you, and for that I need my slate.”
Jenkins saw the device resting active and undamaged on a shot-up cushion.
“Bullet-proof coating,” she muttered. “Please place an appendage on the genetic sampler.”
Genetic what now? Then Jenkins noticed an indentation in the smooth surface of the slate and pressed his thumb to it.
“Grant full access to this genetic ID,” said Olvanjie. “Privilege Alpha-Alpha-Alpha.”
“New access granted,” acknowledged the slate in Zuparti.
“Are you bequeathing your trading empire to me?” Jenkins shook his head, not quite believing it.
“A small amount, yes. But only to seed the operation I wish you to lead. For the rest of my trading interests, succession planning has been in place for many decades now. Leave them alone. Jenkins, I do not believe this attack was pure chance. I was targeted. Because of my wealth and success, yes, but I have been asking questions, too. And I have learned answers.”
“The Scourge? You know who they are?”
Olvanjie’s whiskers drooped. “I had only just begun that journey. But I have locations, sightings, shipments, signal intercepts, and incident reports from every system in the nebula over a thousand years. I am getting close. Close enough to name them. The Scourge, the Curse, the Doom—all these names are inadequate because they imply randomness to the nebula’s misfortunes. I call them the Scythe, because there is a purpose to their operation. They are a tool wielded with precision to slice through shoots of hope that grow too tall. The Spine Nebula is carefully managed to suit whoever wields the Scythe. Find the power who lurks in the shadows. Kill them. And the Scythe will fall to the ground and rust into oblivion.”
“The arms shipments…you planned to fight the Scythe with an army. Why not hire mercs? It’s what they’re there for.”
“Because the Scythe kept us too poor. Even I couldn’t fund an entire war, which is why we must arm the people of the nebula. Use my evidence as a weapon. Reveal the truth of who we face, and they will fight for their future and their children’s future. You know it is the right thing to do.”
Jenkins regarded Olvanjie for several hard seconds. “I’m sorry, but I’m too old to pretend to be someone I’m not, and I ain’t no hero.” He grimaced at the trembling alien. “See, a hero is someone who reaches for glory and chooses to forget the route they took to get there, a route still slick with the blood of their friends. Sorry, Olvanjie, but I’ve no truck with that. I’m a free trader with a capital Free. It’s all I ever wanted to be. All I’ll ever amount to.”
“You’re wrong, Jenkins. I’ve watched you for years. You’re more than you know. Embrace the patriotism that I know flows within you.”
Jenkins shook his head sadly. Before he could explain that she was confusing him with someone else, a rattle came to the Zuparti’s throat, and her eyes glassed over.
He touched a hand to the dead alien. “I’m sorry, Olvanjie. For everything.”
Poor thing. The drugs that must have been swirling around her stricken body had made her talk madness. Patriot? He supposed he was in a sense, but Jenkins’ patriotism reached only as far as the outer hull of the Unlikely Regret.
He replaced her bullet-proof slate upon its pillow, unslung his Nock Niner, and left the tent without looking back.
Three minutes later, sadly picking his way through the ruins of Shaloyl-Huk, Jenkins realized he was not alone. He sensed motion. From a hundred yards ahead.
He ducked into a gap between two tents, stepping inside the ruin of one to peer out through a rent in the tent fabric.
It was a girl. A Selroth of all things, an aquatic humanoid race. She wore a rebreather torus around her neck, filled with breathing water. A tube connected the torus to a water tank on her back.
His pendant offered no translation of her cries, but he didn’t think he was imagining their mournful edge, nor the wide-open look of someone who had been forced to experience horrors she simply couldn’t take in.
He was about to rush out, to comfort her, then he looked down at his volley gun. It probably wasn’t the best thing to wave in front of the girl’s face right now.
He lowered it to the ground.
That hesitation probably saved his life.
He heard the sudden whine of ducted fans, grabbed his Nock once more, and looked out the tent.
A flitter was screaming down the main tent avenue. His flitter.
There were four unremarkable looking people wearing light combat armor in it. They were machine gunning the Selroth girl.
“Hey!” he roared, stepping out into the open. “Pick on someone—”
But he
was already too late. They had gunned down the girl, and they had spotted him.
“Let’s see how you like thirds, you Scythe fuckers.”
At a range of barely twenty yards, Jenkins fired his Nock. He panned the barrel left to track the moving vehicle while the volley gun staggered the discharge from each barrel, reducing the recoil from insane to merely brutal.
Jenkins preferred a load out he called thirds. One third incendiary, another of armor piercing, and a third the caseless rounds carrying explosive tips.
Over the years, he’d given his flitter many modifications, which naturally included a number of smuggling compartments. One of these was loaded with hydrogen fuel cells he’d picked up from a warehouse that morning, with the intention of liberating them from export duties.
His flitter went up in a funeral pyre, its blazing chassis pinwheeling past him along the dirt avenue. He ducked as rounds cooked off, and burning debris rained down on him. Some of the debris were parts of the Scythe killers. There were dead now, their hair and clothing burning fiercely.
Jenkins activated the auto-reload on his Nock and hurried to the Selroth girl sprawled in a puddle of bloody water.
He stared at the pitiful sight for a long while, wrestling with something inside that he couldn’t quite put a name to.
The fires had burned themselves out by the time something broke within him, and he sank to his knees, weeping.
When he could cry no more, he stood over the girl and promised she wouldn’t be forgotten, that the Scythe would never be forgiven.
He marched back to Olvanjie’s tent. He needed that damned slate.
He was Captain Lenworth Rushby Jenkins, and in his 70th year he was taking a new turn in life.
He was going to stand up to the Scythe.
And he was going to crush them.
* * * * *
PART1: A HIDDEN WAR
Chapter One
Med Bay 13. Midnight Sun.
“Hold me…”
“I’ll never leave you.”
“…until I black out. Then get your fat ass off me, Sun. You’re hurting me.”
Branco’s lover sprang erect and hovered over him on all fours like a startled cat. “Hang in there and fight,” Sun told him sternly. “I need you, Branco. I need you. I’ll never leave you.”
While he drifted through hellish dreamscapes, the final words they had spoken looped endlessly, a backdrop to the interminable wars he fought in his mind.
He battled imaginary alien hordes, driving them back from within the alloy, carbon fiber and carbon nano-tube bastion of his CASPer suit. Another time, he was armed only with a bronze sword and obsidian-tipped spear. He piloted a battlecruiser. Then he was the starship, his shields burning as the particle cannons in the orbitals seared his hull.
He fought to hold onto Sun’s slender wrist as she dangled from the precipice, buffeting storms threatening his own hold on the mountainside.
He fought for breath as he dived through underwater pipes, forcing himself to keep going despite the burn in his chest and the pressure of the water crushing him.
Sun had told him to hang in there and fight.
And that’s what he did.
Always, endlessly, he fought.
And always, Sun was beside him.
“I’ll never leave you…”
Silence…
A quiet smashed his dreamworlds so completely it hurt.
Sounds, scents, and sights: all vanished. The feeling that Sun was with him—would remain by his side until the end of the universe—resisted for a moment. Then it too was gone.
For a few moments more, emptiness engulfed him.
Then the pain hit.
Mind-eviscerating white-hot agony.
Every nerve on fire.
Every cell swollen with excruciation.
Everything.
The pain was overwhelming. Total. It didn’t come from any one place. Branco’s entire universe consisted only of concentrated torture.
He woke, screaming.
And carried on screaming until he was forced to take breath.
Everything was white. White pain. White noise. White was all he could see.
Am I in hyperspace?
It was his first coherent thought. Knowing this, he rallied his senses.
The hurt was still eye-poppingly intense, but he could see he was in a medical bay. Someone was standing over him. They were holding a brutal syringe.
Branco tried to ask what the hell was happening, but all he could utter was a high-pitched shriek.
“Sorry,” said the medic. “I pumped you with full-spectrum nanites. It probably smarts a bit.”
They were in a medical bay on Midnight Sun. Branco had figured out that much. He recognized the medic’s voice too, but he couldn’t focus enough to read the name tag on his jacket.
“I mixed in some pain blockers,” said the medic. “And CASPer candy juice to stim you up. You’re gonna need it.”
The sharp edge to Branco’s torment was blunting. Only a little, but enough for him to do something more constructive than scream. He focused on the syringe in the medic’s hand. It was a big bastard thing. Big enough that he reached out and grabbed it.
He looked at it in his hand as if it were a great treasure. It was a tiny victory, but he was mastering his body once more, using it to control the universe around him.
Buoyed by this minor triumph, he attempted speech.
“Wh-wh-wh—?”
Too much, too soon.
The medic frowned, fuming with impatience, but Branco took a few seconds to marshal his energies and tried again. “What the fuck’s wrong with me?”
“We haven’t time for sugar coating,” said the medic. He threw off Branco’s sheet and pointed at his legs.
His leg stumps.
A black network of necrotic veins stood out against his pallid flesh. The bottoms of his stumps looked like potatoes that had been left in storage too long: putrid and weeping slime.
Shouting caught his attention from the passageway outside. Human mixed with Zuul barks.
“What’s going on?” he asked the medic.
The man suddenly went cross-eyed as a hole burned its way through his skull, scorching his skin on the way out. As he tottered forward, the laser beam—which was now dimly visible through vaporized parts of his brain—sliced through the top of his head, transforming his skull into a grisly Human screwhead.
Laser rifle.
Before the medic had finished slumping to the floor, Branco pulled his arms tight against his side and yelled, “Help! Untie me!”
A Zuul merc poked his muzzle in from the passageway outside and sniffed around the medical bay.
He didn’t look friendly.
And he wasn’t playing Branco’s game.
“I don’t think so,” said the Zuul, bringing his laser rifle to bear.
“Idiot,” Branco snapped. “I’m your objective.” He barked out a Zuul word Sergeant Hrrn had taught him before the Raknar job on Rakbutu-Tereus. According to Hrrn, it was a mild insult. “Asshole,” the sergeant had suggested as a translation, but he’d been grinning.
By the way the Zuul’s eyes widened and his ears lay flat against his head, whatever Branco had just said was a tad stronger than asshole.
“Aren’t you on a retrieval contract?” Branco asked the stunned Zuul, using English this time and allowing the Zuul’s translator to convert his words into barks and whistles. “Aren’t you here to rescue me?”
“No.” The Zuul rolled back his lips. “I’m here to kill you.”
“I have valuable information on F11 trading irregularities,” Branco said hurriedly. “That’s why the Midnighters kidnapped and drugged me. They want what I know. Spare me, and I’ll pass that knowledge on to you.”
“Tell me first.”
“It will take a long time. Also, I need to access my slate. Untie me.”
“Why do you delay, Tungaar?” said a second Zuul from the entranceway. Severa
l more Zuul raced past, heading deeper into the ship.
“Possibly a source of valuable plunder,” Tungaar answered. “Or maybe a Human deception.”
“Deception?” Branco yelled. “Look what they did to me. Do you think I’m making this up?”
“He smells half rotted,” said the Zuul from the entrance.
Tungaar sniffed and drew close to Branco’s bed. He gave a start when he saw the state of Branco’s legs.
“This Human is no threat, Corporal. I shall secure it and we can interrogate it once we have seized the ship.”
“Do it!” ordered the corporal. “Do it quickly. And, Tungaar…No one else needs to know about the Human or share in any credits we might get for him.”
The junior of the two Zuul thumbed the safety on his rifle, slung it over his shoulder, and started pulling a hover-stretcher off the bulkhead rack.
“Hey, Tungaar—ahh!” A sudden burst of pain wrenched a groan from Branco. “Come…come closer. I got partial systems access before they caught me. I have the passcode. I can help you take the ship.”
“My hearing is perfectly adequate. Speak.”
“No way, Fido. Any micro-drones and sharp-eared Zuul in the corridor will hear, too. I want you to have a reason to keep me alive, and you’ll only do that if we keep my juiciest intel between us.”
Tungaar twitched his whiskers but saw the logic in Branco’s words. He came over to the bed.
What he didn’t see was a threat.
Why should he? The Human was obviously very sick, riddled with pain, strapped to his bed, unarmed, and missing his legs. How could he possibly be a hazard?
Admittedly, Branco was faking being strapped to the bed—not that the Zuul had bothered to check—but the other disadvantages he carried were all true, and none of them mattered a damn. It might be provisional for the moment, but Humans were the 37th mercenary race, and they’d earned that status the hard way.
Humans were always a threat.
Branco risked a quick look at the laser rifle, judging its model and checking Tungaar’s grip on the weapon. Then the rifle was out of sight because the merc was leaning over his face, close enough for Branco to feel a splash of drool and feel the heat from the alien’s breath. There was an unexpected odor, too. Perfume! Tungaar was clearly a merc who took care to present himself well.
Endless Night (The Guild Wars Book 3) Page 2