by Tom Julian
“She’s challenging me.”
At the end of the alley, he could see they had a clear path to Kees’s bar. Droma threw one of the swords and it stuck in the ground near Timberwolf’s feet. “You challenging her?” Salla asked.
“Hell no.”
Timberwolf tapped his smart-device, sending Kees their location. They backed slowly out of the alley and into the street in front of the bar. The bar glowed with neon and two massive flames burst from elements on each side of the porch, burning off gas from the tower. Michael got to his feet, holding his side.
Kees stepped out onto the porch. He cocked a plasma shotgun on his hip. Behind him a stream of gunman slipped out and took positions behind cover in the street. The Phaelon stayed in the shadows and sent their howls out of the darkness. “What’d you bring here?”
“I’m doubling the pay again.”
Smoke rose in the city behind the Phaelon and fire licked the sky. The warriors clicked their swords and guns together. The only sight of them were the orange slits in their helmets, hanging in the darkness like Cheshire grins. A bolt of lightning sparked near the tower, sending an ungodly crack through the air.
The mercenaries on the porch didn’t budge. Timberwolf saw Red Forest insignias on some of their armor. These were men who had tangled with the Phaelon before and were looking for payback. A man with the name M. Warner stenciled on his armor dropped plasma grenade after grenade into his launcher. He looked to be over seventy and had a face like a baseball glove.
“What’s going to happen?” Salla asked, backing up closer to the porch as the Phaelon hisses echoed from everywhere.
“Nothing good.”
“Do we fight?” Salla asked, without reservation. Timberwolf couldn’t help being impressed that she seemed genuinely willing to make a stand here. In the darkness, the whine of chemical lasers warming trilled the air.
“We run like hell.”
A quick blast of laser went high over the bar, singeing the rooftop. The Phaelon laughed and howled as a few of the younger fighters slipped away. Warner cursed and spit tobacco on the ground, flipping the safety off his weapon. As the others followed his lead, a grappling hook came out of the darkness, wrapping around Warner’s foot and dragging him off the porch and onto the gravel. The old man launched his grenades into the darkness and the street suddenly burst with white fire. The Phaelon leaped from their positions, some forward and some high into the air.
“Run like hell now!” Timberwolf yelled as the other mercenaries let loose with a wall of white-hot plasma, and laser blasts returned. Timberwolf and Salla rushed through Kees’s bar, glass and metal exploding all around them. Timberwolf looked back for an instant. The Phaelon were already on the porch, cutting down and scattering the mercenaries. As they ran out the back door, a concussion grenade exploded behind them, shattering the whole front of the bar.
Uninjured, they were running through the streets again, explosions and laser blasts tearing through the night. A few hardy mercenaries stood at a corner, laying down a wall of plasma. They rushed by them and turned into the Glox quarter. Panicked Glox scattered as Timberwolf and Salla rushed through the street, adrenaline driving them to sprint. They pushed through the flowing sheets that cluttered the way, their brilliant colors dulled in the darkness. A man lay injured on the ground and Timberwolf grabbed his rifle. He fired as he went, aiming low and setting the burst as wide as possible.
Droma, the massive Phaelon clan leader, leaped down in front of them. She lowered a shoulder and Timberwolf clanged off her. Spinning away, the Phaelon went for Salla, blade out. Stumbling and holding his leg, Warner came from an alley. He launched a grenade that clanged off Droma’s chest and spun away, exploding over a rooftop.
Droma took another step towards Salla, but staggered, dropping to a knee. As she struggled upward, Salla and Timberwolf were off again, running for the edges of the O2 zone. In just a few moments, the air was thinning and the sounds of the fighting grew fainter. They passed the last few meager structures at the edges of Golgotha City and were in the desert. Salla reached for her breather and took a hit. They looked back at the fireballs and streaks of laser still erupting over the city. “I don’t think they’d know to follow us out here,” Timberwolf said. Their shuttle sat nestled in a gully not far away.
“Thank God,” Salla replied, fighting for her breath. Towards the edge of town a spindly communications tower, the second largest structure on Golgotha, buckled and keeled over, smashing up a cloud of dirt and smoke. Salla leaned against a rock, taking a second to rest. “You can feel free to work alone next time.”
She went to take another hit off her breather, but dropped it. When she reached for it, she saw another breather that wasn’t hers on the ground. She handed the breather to Timberwolf. It was a fancy custom job, encrusted in gold with the initials HT stenciled on the cover. “Heelo?” Timberwolf called.
Down near the shuttle, Heelo Tembe rested against a rock, his head lying on the hard slate like it was a pillow. There was a calm smile on his face.
“Heelo?” Timberwolf turned him over. His breathing was low and his skin was cold. “Where’s Relaund, Heelo?”
The man’s lips moved slowly and Timberwolf leaned in. “He went for a ride.”
Heelo struggled, then went silent, his breathing suddenly labored. Timberwolf roused him again, putting the breather to his face. “With who? Why’d you take him out here?”
“They said they knew you,” he croaked, his lips dry as chalk.
“Who was it?” Timberwolf demanded.
“It wasn’t human,” Heelo responded.
“Salla, fire up the shuttle,” Timberwolf said. He needed her away for a minute. She backed away, getting onto the ship. “What was it?” Timberwolf asked Heelo, knowing the answer but needing to be sure.
“An old friend with nice red eyes…” Heelo stopped a moment, the smile on his face melting away, Kizik’s influence waning. The man was realizing. “It was a spider! Oh God, it was an Arnock!” Heelo choked and coughed. “Oh God. It made me take him out here!” Heelo gripped Timberwolf’s arm, his eyes panicking.
“This isn’t personal.” Timberwolf put his hand over Heelo’s mouth and the man’s body shuddered. “No sorry, it is personal.” Heelo coughed a few times before finally going still.
Timberwolf shuddered. Heelo wasn’t a threat. He’d killed him because he was angry. Not his style, even after what had happened. He backed away. Killing someone was never easy, but he pushed the guilt away. He needed to focus on what was happening. Kizik was playing with him, cutting to the bone, showing Timberwolf that he could hurt him in the coldest way. The shuttle’s engines puffed to life and Timberwolf turned and climbed aboard, sliding into the seat next to Salla.
It was an Arnock. This had lots of bad implications. He searched his mind for Kizik as Salla lifted off, fires below them burning all across Golgotha City. He didn’t feel Kizik at first, felt nothing actually, like he was standing outside of a locked door. Then, for just an instant, he felt a sadness, a lament that he’d never experienced before—the moan of someone who had lost everything. Maybe it was Kizik; maybe it was his own regret. It was hard to tell.
AFTERMATH
Gray stepped over the burning embers of Leedy’s bar that had blown out into the street during the fighting. A man’s arm poked out from under a hunk of tin. Gray lifted the debris and that’s all there was, just a man’s arm. “I get held up for five minutes, Michael,” Gray said, smirking but clearly awed by the performance of the Phaelon clan.
The Phaelon stood obediently in two rows. Droma stood to the side and apart from the others. None of them paid any mind to the foes they’d just been battling, some of whom moaned and crawled away from the scene. Other mercenaries lay dead or wounded in adjoining streets and alleys. Michael strode before the clan. “We started with ten. We ended with ten. A few scratches here and there. There must have been fifty mercs out here.”
“Amazing.” Gray nodded, surv
eying the scene. “Timberwolf?” he asked.
“Gone,” Michael replied.
Kees Leedy sat, head in hands, against a lamppost. Gray tapped the man with his toe, and he crumpled over. He was dead, a deep, red gash cut across his belly. Gray shook his head. They killed Kees, really? He made eye contact with Michael, who gave him back a crooked smile.
“You got what you asked for,” Michael said.
“They’ve certainly given us a lesson. Okay, pack them up. Let’s get out of here before we have to tear this place apart again, but shackle them.”
“Shackle them, why?” Michael asked.
“I’ve got something in mind for when we get back to the Nemesis. Cuff them and make them understand it’s what you want.”
Michael shook his head. He’d do as Gray asked but he’d paid for the Phaelon loyalty with his bruises already.
Warner stood at the edge of the scene. The old man had survived the fighting. Unfazed by the destruction, he wrapped a bandage around his thumb. “What?” Warner asked as Gray sized him up.
“You want a job?” Gray asked. Warner accepted with a shrug, slinging his pack over his shoulder.
They marched to the edge of the O2 zone, the short night giving way to the dawn—Gray and Warner in front, the Phaelon shackled together in two columns behind Michael. Gray didn’t explain the details of the operation to Warner, just that he needed a steady gun who could lead less experienced men.
As they got close to Nemesis, the porters sent by Rain Saling took men away on stretchers in the other direction. One of the men, Scariot, reached for Gray as he passed. “Don’t leave us here!” Gray ignored him. Scariot had plasma burns from his shoulder to his hip, but it wasn’t his physical state that made him cry out. “Please, not on Golgotha!”
In the cargo bay, Izabeck snuck a cigarette. While Gray had been gone he’d sent reports to Cardinal Jacob. He had told him about what happened on The Outpost, but he hadn’t mentioned what Gray had done after that—that he’d made the men burn their totems and that he claimed to be the sword of God. He didn’t know exactly why, but he felt it was right to let this play out more.
Unlike Cardinal Jacob, Izabeck didn’t feel anything selfish in Gray. When Gray spoke and prayed, Izabeck felt something pure and unknown, but honest. He considered the “message” he carried in his arm from Cardinal Jacob to Gray. Cardinal Jacob calls the bomb he put in my arm a message! Izabeck snickered. If Gray had wanted him to lay down his life, Izabeck knew he would have asked him simply and without obfuscation.
He sensed that there was something working through Gray that even Gray didn’t fully understand. Izabeck felt the love mixed with cruelty that came through Gray’s actions. He felt it was his duty to witness and challenge what this man did. Gray may have been wildly egotistical, unbalanced, judgmental, forceful and silver-tongued, but wasn’t the Word of God also all these things?
Gray had been so at peace when they’d prayed together before descending to Golgotha. When he’d been stuck with Gray in the airlock he saw the man sleeping—asleep as he’d been literally awhirl in the tempest! Izabeck had been holding on for dear life, sure that he’d been forsaken. How someone could be at peace at such a time was a mystery that Izabeck needed to understand. The man wanted to build a new testament and Izabeck wanted to write it. The “message” from Cardinal Jacob? Izabeck decided it was now his to deliver if and when he saw fit.
He saw the shadows of Gray’s party advancing up the gangplank. They approached, silhouetted in front of the dull-white, newly risen Golgotha sun. Two columns of mercenaries followed behind Gray, huge men, their long shadows now reaching into the cargo bay. He could see their helmets, clipped to their shoulders and swinging.
Izabeck shielded his face from the bright sunrise as Gray passed by him and winked. He knew instantly something was different about Gray. His swagger told Izabeck that his placid demeanor had been only temporary.
Izabeck’s eyes went wide when he realized that the men coming aboard were not men at all, but Phaelon, hauling their gear and dressed in their elaborate red armor. One at the back flicked out her forked tongue at Izabeck as she passed. “Bishop! Bishop!” Izabeck tailed after Gray, blocking his way once he got to the galley.
“My Izabeck, how’s your third testament coming?” Gray asked. “Have you heard the Word of God yet today? I know it’s early and you need your morning smoke.”
“You’re bringing unclean forms on a sacred mission. This will end in fire for us all!”
Gray pushed passed him to the adjacent crew quarters. He banged on the cabin doors. A door was open and Windwhistle slept in his bunk. Gray grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, pulling him back to the galley.
Gray took Izabeck’s electronic notebook from his hands. “How’s this?” He began writing, speaking aloud what he scrawled. “And lo our leader was crazed in the eye and he wenteth into town and broughteth back ass-kickers!” Izabeck snatched back the notebook, catching Gray giving him a sly smile as he did.
The rest of the men filed into the galley—twelve survivors with blank faces and mouths agape. They stared at the Phaelon, still shackled together, huge compared to Michael who moved among them. Gray strode to the center of the room. He briefly eyed a bloodstain still on the floor, from when this place held their casualties.
“The wounded and the dead are gone!” Gray began. “We don’t need them. We didn’t want them. They’ve been cleansed from our company!” Gray paused, looking over all of their faces. “If you are here, then God’s maybe decided that you’re suitable to continue. There are twelve of you, fitting.” He turned to Michael. “How many in Droma’s clan?”
“Ten total, Bishop,” Michael answered.
“And during our war, what was their kill ratio?”
“Man to man? Five to one.”
Gray shook his head, hands on his hips. “So, on Phaelon Prime, every one of them we killed, they killed five of us. Amazing we beat them. Amazing.” Gray shook his head, took the cigarette that still hung from Izabeck’s mouth. He took a long drag. “Believers shun tobacco, alcohol, lying with those who aren’t your betrothed. I say to hell with all that. You can’t pretend to be pure. None of us can. Not I, not I.” Gray tapped ash onto the floor.
Izabeck snatched the cigarette from Gray’s mouth, stomped it out. Gray continued, “You have no fire. You’re like the cigarette butt our dear Izabeck’s just extinguished. You’re not dry leaves waiting to be burned. You couldn’t catch on fire if you were covered in gasoline! Drink, screw, smoke. I don’t care. You need fight and these serpents are here to teach us that.”
Izabeck couldn’t take anymore. He felt his duty to God swelling up inside him. He needed to challenge Gray and do it now. “The Sabatin we carry. We tolerate it. These Phaelon are…living garbage.”
“Oh, so you’re high and mighty? I’ll explain once. We just got our asses handed to us because we lacked will. Gentlemen, you need to learn what will is.”
Michael activated a remote control and the shackles fell from the clan’s wrists and ankles. “Red Forest. The Knife Valley. The Throne Country.” Michael inventoried places where the Phaelon had bled them so dearly.
“That’s where they tried to teach us will!” Gray punched one hand into the open palm of the other. “And we didn’t listen. You’re all just not worthy of God’s mission yet. I’ve prayed on this and you need a lesson. Thank you.” Gray planted his finger on Izabeck’s chest as he left. “Put this part in your fucking book!”
“We’re headed to Highland,” Michael growled. “No one wavers!”
NOVA
For a spaceship, Timberwolf liked Nina. Not so small that it felt like a coffin and not so large that you would get lost. It was a nice vessel, rounded edges so you didn’t bruise yourself going around corners when the artificial gravity lapsed. The food was fantastic, all high-end gourmet rations made by Highland.
He entered the galley and began going through the stores. He pulled a bunch of meals out
and stuffed them into a duffle bag. He even found a few bottles of self-chilling Riesling that would go well with the coconut chicken. “Going somewhere?” he heard Salla ask from behind him.
“You’re going somewhere, Vice,” he said, continuing to pack the bag and open up an additional one. “You’re going to take one of the shuttles to Tep Nine-Fifty. You’re getting the hell out of here.”
“Sorry, that’s not happening. Tep Nine-Fifty makes Golgotha look like high-society.”
“You don’t have to stay there. Take some of Achilles’s money and get on a transport. Go see Earth. Breathe in real air.”
“You’re scared.”
He finally turned to her. “That’s part of it.”
“I’m not,” she said.
“That’s the other part of it. You’re right. I work alone. I have to cut you away. I have to cut my brother away and not think of anything else but getting this job done.”
“This is too big for one person.”
“Not for me.”
“Are you kidding me?” she challenged.
“I almost killed you down there!” he growled. She stepped away, steadying herself against a table. “I shot myself instead, remember?” He twisted the cap off of one of the bottles of wine and took a long sip. “Here.” He passed her the bottle, but she just held it. “The Arnock that’s in my head calls itself Kizik. It’s a constant presence. Sometimes I get flashes of language and it’s full of hate. Arnock are hateful. It almost made me kill you. And there’s the pain.”
“It hurts?”
“Like hell. Can’t shut it off.”
“You were trying to shut it off. Permanently. All those missions you took.”
“Kizik’s in horrible pain and he shares it with me. It’s a profound loss. Their race has lost almost everything, but they were always holding back. They are capable of horrific things that they don’t even know about. If we go after them again, he’s promised me they will use the last of their breath to destroy us.”
