Blackest Knights

by Phipps, C. T.

  “Anything but opposing you,” Shannon said, wishing she had a glass of water. “Is that it?”

  “One does like to pay for results, yes.”

  “It wouldn’t stop the vote.”

  “You’d be surprised how quickly things can fall apart. If you stopped your campaign, the politicians would see the light. Mind you, the vote will fall apart anyway. It’s amazing how my friends can turn a man’s opinions around. You could almost say they were magic.” Langston’s expression told her he found this to be an exceptionally funny joke, but Shannon didn’t get it. “Really, they’ll be running this state soon. You should get onboard while you still can.”

  “And everyone would know I sold out,” Shannon said.

  “I’m sure we could arrange something,” Langston said. “A death in the family, perhaps.”

  Shannon’s eyes darkened. “Is that a threat?”

  “Yes.” Langston spoke as if it was nothing more than discussing the weather.

  “You are going to regret this conversation,” Shannon said, glad she had an excuse to look away from the check.

  “If you’re referring to the recorder in your purse, you can’t think I’d give you a chance to use it. Neither of us is stupid, Miss O’Hara. Of course, you brought it; of course, I guessed you would. What you don’t know is that everyone in this room works for me. All those customers, aren’t. They are guests of my backers when not backers themselves. Those few who can be interviewed will all report that I sat at this table and that you never showed up. Take the money, Shannon. It’s the only way you’re walking out of here.”

  “I must admit,” Shannon said after a pause. “I’m surprised you went this far this quickly.” She heard the footsteps of his men coming up behind her.

  “One doesn’t reach the levels of success I have without being willing to push some limits,” Langston said, finishing his steak. “Take the money.”

  “No.” Shannon had a gun in her purse. It had felt like a ridiculous extravagance, but this was insane. Looking at the people around her, she saw only hungry disinterested faces. The kind which belonged to serial killers or CEOs who genuinely didn’t understand what was wrong with stealing their employee’s pensions. The few who paid her any attention seemed like they were going to enjoy seeing her beaten or killed.

  “I must admit, I’m almost glad. It’s always disappointing watching someone sell out. Meeting someone who truly sticks to her ideals… It reaffirms my faith in humanity.” Langston took the check.

  Shannon slammed her chair backwards, trying to stand before the men could move, but a cattle prod found her back, and she fell forward into the table. It proved no one cared as not a single word was raised in protest, not a single flinch was made even from the least threatening guest. She was in a room of psychopaths.

  Or monsters.

  “You’re going to be… what do they call them, a meme? One of those pictures they share online. Famed criminal rights reformer raped and murdered by street thugs. So ironic. The alt-right will have a field day with your picture. This is what you get when you stand up for criminals, they’ll say.”

  By now, three men had Shannon pinned while the fourth brought the cattle prod up again. She had the right side of her face opened by one of them banging her head against the table. Blood poured across the white tablecloth.

  “Fuck you,” she hissed.

  “Oh, of course, you’re right. Threatening you with rape is sexist. Quite beneath me.” He picked up her purse and stood up. “Men, just beat her to death and dump her in a field. So you see, Miss O’Henry, I can be civilized.”

  One of the thugs licked the cut on her face.

  Shannon could barely remember the trip or the beating, honestly. Being helpless enraged her, but repeated strikes from the cattle prod kept her muscles from working, kept her mind swimming in agony. Her efforts to punch back resulted in nothing but random flailing at best, and weak flailing at that. She’d sworn she’d never be helpless again. It was why she’d taken classes, learned to defend herself. Now, when it mattered, it didn’t matter at all.

  She wasn’t even sure where she was. A brownfield by some warehouses, maybe. It stunk. Or maybe that was the fact she’d lost control of her body’s functions during the attack. Action movies didn’t mention that was prone to happening.

  Then the beating stopped. For her at least. Shannon could hear the sounds, but not feel the blows. No, someone else was being hit now. She tried to open a swollen eye. The images were blurry, but she could make out another man, beating the last of her abusers with a bat. It was too hard to keep her eye open, though and she fell into the soil, coughing up blood. Besides, she wasn’t seeing straight anyway since the guy looked like he was chewing on the wrist right now before throwing their limb forms away.

  That couldn’t be right.

  “Hey now, don’t waste that stuff,” the newcomer said, wiping the blood from her cheek with his finger.

  Shannon could barely make out the guy’s form, but he was a tall, thin, black man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, blue jeans, and a circular straw hat of the kind that had been popular in the 1920s. His weirdly dated clothes didn’t disguise the fact he’d spilled some blood on his shirt and had casually killed four people from the looks of things. She didn’t care about that now for obvious reasons and hoped his victims burned in hell.

  “Hospital,” Shannon muttered.

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Red. People like me got a sense for this stuff. I can hear it sloshing around inside you. They wrecked your liver and your spleen pretty good. Your blood’s filling up with toxins, what isn’t leaking out all inside you. Even if I got you to the hospital before you died, they’d just start filling out paperwork for your corpse, you know. Might as well save them the trouble.”

  “Langston Kennelworth had me murdered,” Shannon said, muttered really, as her lungs were filled with fluid. “Tell everyone.”

  “I doubt they’d much believe me anyway. But I’ll do what I can. I owe you that much.”

  “Owe me?”

  “My brother was in Reichlin when you made them take down the hot boxes. I don’t normally do the hero thing, but I recognized your hair. Not a lot of redheads with hair that long in these parts, and I said, ‘I think that’s the girl who made the prisons better,’ ya hear? So, I came to save you.”

  “Too late.”

  “Eh, life. Ain’t that the way?”

  He sounded awfully jovial for having a conversation with a dead woman. Not that Shannon had a lot of spare brainpower left for figuring him out.

  “I never understood people like you,” the stranger said.

  “Just want to make things better.”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing. I understand people that don’t. The lazy, the scared. The people who just want to get through another day and hope that the worst doesn’t find them just yet. I get them. They’re bastards, but I get them. It’s people like you I don’t get. You see the problems, you know the world sucks, and the rich are eating everyone alive, and it makes you mad enough to do something… but it doesn’t make you angry? Me, it makes me want to tear their hearts out.”

  “I’m not… violent,” Shannon said. “Didn’t help.”

  “No, it didn’t,” he said. “So, here’s what I can do for you. Two choices. I can throw your corpse, and the corpses of these idiots, onto Kennelworth’s front lawn. Call the cops and the press, make a big show out of it. It won’t bring him down, but it will slather his name in the mud, make him spend a lot of money holding off investigations. It’ll hurt him a little. You know, your style. Maybe even piss off his backers enough to kill him. They’re the snooty members of my social club that are all about legitimacy these days. Pfft, like that’s going to work out. This whole bailout and reveal thing is a stupid idea if you ask me. All it’s gonna do is bring down the hunters, puppies, and merlins.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Shannon said, wondering if she was hallucinating in h
er dying moments.

  The man ignored her. “Alternatively, I can throw your corpse on his front lawn, and your corpse can tear his throat out. My style. You don’t have to understand what I’m asking, just tell me, right now, which do you want more, embarrassing him or tearing his throat out like an animal? What’s it gonna be?”

  Shannon used her last breaths to rasp out, “I want… I want… to kill him.”

  Shannon saw the man smile with an uncomfortably shark-like set of teeth. “Maybe I understand you a bit better than I thought.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” the man said, opening his mouth to reveal bloodstained teeth that descended on her.

  Langston Kennelworth was pleased with himself. He’d tried many ways to feel the high, but the exercise of power knew no equal. By the time he got home after dallying with a mistress, it was three in the morning. He still had a skip in his step as he came up the stairs from his garage and walked through to a wide-open living room. That was where he saw Shannon O’Henry, sitting on his couch next to a strangely dressed man and the corpse of one of his security men. All three were splattered with blood.

  It took him a second to recognize the man as Benny, one of Ashura’s brood. Langston had worked decades for the blessing and hadn’t gotten anywhere close to it. The realization Shannon O’Henry had been gifted was more angering than the fact she was in his home. It took another second for the full implications of that to sink in and Langston’s anger to turn into terror.

  “I have decided,” Shannon said, “not to be civilized.”

  Langston tried to run, but Shannon was on him before he reached the hallway, wrapping herself around his torso and sinking her new fangs deeply into his throat to suck on the brilliant red life that came forth. His last thoughts were the fact his backers wouldn’t miss him and would simply find another lawyer to handle their business. The Reveal was coming, and they had a thousand other people like him to pick up the slack.

  For some reason, he found that humorous.

  When Shannon was done, she searched Langston’s clothes until she found the check. Benny was already gone by the time she turned around. Shannon was on her own. The money would help, though.

  She also had a lot of people left to eat.

  Lost Honor

  By C. T. Phipps

  “You want me to be a pirate?” I asked, staring at the hologram of Commonwealth Inquisitor General Ida Claire.

  The two of us were conversing in the Captain’s Quarters of the starship Melampus, which had formerly been hers before I’d taken it in a mutiny. We had a complex relationship as you might guess. I wasn’t a deserter from the Commonwealth Navy as it had been a free trading vessel she’d been using to collect information on the old Archduchy of Crius. While Ida resented losing her ship, it wasn’t a vessel she cared about enough not to make deals to keep us from being on the Commonwealth’s Most Wanted list.

  “Why not? You’re already one,” Ida said, speaking a thick New Atlanta accent. She was a small, dark-skinned woman who was over a hundred years old and dressed like someone’s rural grandmother with a wide-brimmed hat. Despite that, I knew her to be one of the most cunning and dangerous women in the Spiral.

  “I’m a smuggler, not a pirate,” I said, annoyed.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “A pirate steals from fellow spacers, a smuggler steals from the government.”

  I also didn’t consider the Commonwealth to be my government. They had conquered almost all the human colonies in the Reclamation, but some people had given a better fight than others. My people had fought too hard, and it had resulted in a horrific price: they were hit by mass drivers with billions killed. I’d have hated them forever if not for the fact I saw the consequences of terrorism following their takeover of Crius’ colonies. At some point, someone had to lay down their sword and energy shield.

  Ida shrugged. “Topato, Potamo. Different spelling, same nasty taste. I think you’re going to want to hear my offer.”

  “I sincerely doubt that,” I said, about ready to shut off her feed. The Commonwealth’s power was waning, and they were a fraction of what they’d formally been. What went around, came around but usually not in a single lifetime.

  Ida lifted her hand and gestured to her side. A schematic of a beautiful cigar-shaped vessel covered in coral-like growths, alien in manufacture, appeared. “Here is the Kvari Queen. It is a luxury vessel for the Point 100 percent of the galaxy’s richest. Over a kilometer long, excellent defenses, and the size of a small city.”

  “Sounds delightful,” I said, softly. “Still not sure what I should want out of it.”

  “Money for sure,” Ida said. “The ship maintains a vast collection of fire jewels as an untraceable currency useful for dealing with Border Worlds and Commonwealth investors.”

  “Sounds too good to be true.”

  “I know.”

  “No, I mean that literally. I think you’re making this up to get us to rob this ship.”

  Ida chuckled. “Perhaps I’m exaggerating a bit.”

  “What do you really want?”

  Ida blinked. “We want you to kill a man.”

  “I’m not an assassin either.”

  “You might make an exception for this one,” Ida said, conjuring an image.

  I was pouring a bottle of Belenus Scotch when I overflowed the drink, seeing the hologram of the man involved. “Yes, I suppose you would.”

  High Colonel Vincent ap Bastille was a man of Indras descent with long white hair tied into a functional ponytail. He was dressed in a black Engel-fighter spacesuit, but his expression was still one of smug self-assurance.

  “The Betrayer,” Ida said. “Well, from your perspective at least.”

  “From any sane person’s perspective,” I said, hissing at him.

  Vincent ap Bastille ranked among Judas, Brutus, and Radovid de Sanchez for loathsome traitors. When the majority of the Crius Home Fleet had been battling the Commonwealth at Hoshi’s Point, Vincent had used his position as commander of the Lunar Defense Station Grid to let the Commonwealth assault force through. The blood of billions was on his hand, and while he couldn’t have held his position, he might have delayed the attackers long enough to receive reinforcements or call for help.

  The Commonwealth had saved Vincent ap Bastille from the vengeance of Crius but not his family or associates. They had all been hunted down by people, well, like me. Parades and celebrations on Albion featuring him had been a source of riots, protests, and even terrorism. Last I’d heard, he’d retired to a palatial estate with no one but bioroids for company.

  “Perhaps,” Ida said, shrugging. “It’s never a good idea to toss away the traitors of the nations you conquer. They may be completely untrustworthy, but you never know when you’re going to need them.”

  “Or throw them at vengeance-crazed Crius,” Cassius said. “I think Genghis Khan used this tactic a few times.”

  “I’m not familiar with that individual,” Ida said. “Do I have your attention?”

  “Perhaps,” I said, upset with myself for still caring about the past.

  I had been a High Colonel in the Crius military as well, one of the greatest pilots ever produced by my society, but it had not been enough. Worse, after the war, I’d been forced to confront the fact the Crius had been brutal imperialists. Everything the Commonwealth had done to us, we’d done to other people and worse over. It meant all of the people I killed, all of the heroics I’d done in the war, all of the lives sacrificed had been for nothing.

  “Perhaps?” Ida asked, surprised. “I would have thought you’d have been all over this.”

  “Murdering a man who is already reviled as an oathbreaker, traitor, and party to genocide is killing someone already half-dead.”

  “Except for the billions of electric pounds in his accounts.”

  “My, you pay well for treason.”

  “Absolutely.”

  I ignored that less th
an tasteful jibe. I’d never inquired to Ida’s role in the Scouring of Crius, but she’d only expressed disgust for it during the time I’d thought her a mere ship captain. A spy could never be truly honorable, but they followed their own oaths. I did not believe her capable of being part of the massacre there even as I knew it was not always easy to balance loyalty to one’s nations against unthinkable crimes. After all, war made monsters of us all.

  Just some more absolutely than others.

  “Let me ask a question,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Then I’ll throw away my distinction between pirate and smuggler.”

  “Just one question?” Ida asked.

  “Only one,” I said, processing what I felt. I still had a lot of hatred left inside me for Vincent, even though we’d never met and were separated by years. “Why are you throwing him under the bus and what do you really want?”

  “That’s two questions?”

  “There’s an and.”

  Ida snorted. “Third grade word games are beneath a pirate king.”

  “I’m a count,” Cassius said. “Or would be if the planet I was count on wasn’t a smoldering ruin and the government I served wasn’t dissolved. I also believe I’m wanted for war crimes, which would be distressing if you hadn’t ruined the concept of them by going after people who killed too many Commonwealth soldiers.”

  Ida frowned. “There’s a lot of blame to go around during the war. Mostly your way.”

  “Goodbye, Ida.”

  Ida sighed. “Unfortunately, the High Colonel had an attack of conscience. He’s taken a lot of information from the databanks of the Watchers by using the money we paid to bribe contractors. Information that we’d very much like to make sure doesn’t end up in the hands of a reporter from Galactic Newsbook Weekly.”

  I stared at her. “The trashy conspiracy e-mag?”

  “The incredibly well-read trashy conspiracy e-mag,” Ida said, frowning. “There’s a reporter meeting him on the boat. He wants to do a physical handoff since the data is encoded but those assholes somehow have last month’s decryption key. Which is when he stole it and sat on it until the decryption key was low security.”