StarCraft II: Devil's Due

by Christie Golden

  “We can’t get out! Don’t you get that, Tychus?” he said, his voice rising in panic.

  “I certainly do,” came Daun’s voice. Another crane slammed into the station, rocking it hard. There were groaning and crashing sounds as pieces of equipment came loose and toppled over. Tychus turned toward the sound of the voice and fired repeatedly.

  Daun’s laughter came, echoing and triumphant. “Nowhere for the Heaven’s Devils to flee or fly,” he said mockingly. “Your friends suffered. And so will you.”

  Jim, too, turned, firing and reloading. He ran out of ammo for the slugthrower and quickly switched to his beloved Colt. Though he used the revolver only rarely, simply firing the thing heartened him. It was a lucky weapon for him, and a smile tugged at his mouth as he took aim and fired.

  The station was filled with the sounds of gunfire and laughter. Something on the other side of the level caught fire and added a glowing orange flicker to the blue emergency lighting. Sparks hissed and sizzled, and acrid smoke started to fill the air.

  Click click click.

  The sound of a Colt out of ammunition.

  Jim lowered it, sickened.

  Was this how it was to be? What a rip-off. Betrayed, trapped, and gunned down by a lunatic. It was such … a stupid, anticlimactic end.

  His duster flying out like wings on either side, Ezekiel Daun dropped down from a catwalk. He landed beautifully, in a crouch, smoke swirling about him, and rose slowly. He had been intimidating in the hologram. But now, with orange and blue light dancing about his tall frame and catching the gleam of both the metallic hand and the metallic gun, he looked to Jim like an incarnation of Death. He kept the pistol trained on them, and they raised their hands slowly. Jim realized that both he and Tychus were shaking.

  In his cybernetic hand, Daun held the controller of a hologram. “You’re being recorded, Mr. Findlay, Mr. Raynor. I have crafted an extensive library of my work, so I am able to sit down and watch whenever I feel like walking down memory lane. So far, this has been quite the little cinematic presentation. Feek was the only other who gave me a worthy show, I think. Ho-barth was weak from her old wounds and Ryk Kydd went too fast to be properly appreciated.”

  Anger cut through the fear as Jim envisioned this man torturing Hiram Feek and Clair Hobarth. He clung to the anger. It cleared his mind of the crippling sensation of mindless terror.

  “But I think I’d like to see a bit more from the two of you before I close the curtain,” Daun said. “Maybe a little … dance routine?” He aimed the gun at Tychus’s feet.

  “Who the hell are you, and why are you letting our own cranes attack the station?”

  The voice came from directly above them, and it belonged to the formerly highly bored Fitz-something. Now he sounded angry and not a little frightened. Jim realized that Daun had not factored the tech into his plans. He had killed everyone on the station, but he had not expected Fitz—who would, of course, have an override key—to leave his post. Daun had likely been tripped up by the very “comm problems” he had created.

  Daun snarled bestially and lifted the gun. Two shots rang out, and Fitz’s lifeless body toppled down, landing with limbs askew, right at Jim’s and Tychus’s feet.

  They acted as one.

  Jim and Tychus sprang to either side of the still-twitching corpse, quickly holstering their guns. They grabbed Fitz’s body, lifted it up in front of them, and charged Daun. The enemy fired at the center of Fitz’s body. Jim and Tychus were behind the corpse but slightly to either side. The bullets passed between them.

  They were on him now. Daun kept firing, but the shots went wild. Snarling, he dropped the gun, drew back his gleaming metallic arm, made a fist, and swung it at them. He punched directly through Fitz’s sternum. The bloody silver fist protruded, covered in gore, from the tech’s back. Still Jim and Tychus kept coming, using their momentum to push Daun’s arm through even farther and trap it there. The bloody metallic limb still clutched and reached ineffectively as Daun went down under them.

  Tychus raised a fist and slammed it down, but somehow Daun jerked to the side just in time. Tychus grunted as his knuckles met metal flooring. He drew his fist back for another punch. Meanwhile, Jim was fumbling beneath the corpse, praying that his hunch was right, when his hands closed on what he wanted.

  He had the key.

  He leaped up and sprinted to the far console, shoving the key in and twisting it hard. The station hummed to life, the relative brightness of the normal lighting harsh after he had been so long in the dark.

  Tychus and Daun were struggling, the body of the hapless Fitz a barrier between them—one that Tychus was exploiting. It made for a ghoulish sight, and Jim felt bile rise in his throat. Tychus was pummeling the man hard, but Daun was still struggling to pull his arm free of its flesh prison. And Jim saw, as Tychus did not, that he was starting to succeed.

  “Tychus! Let’s go! Now!”

  Tychus looked up, and for a moment Jim saw not his friend but something very dark and dangerous. Then it was gone. Tychus knew and trusted Jim well enough to obey when Jim started barking orders in that tone of voice. With a final savage punch that jerked Daun’s already battered head brutally to the side, he threw both bounty hunter and corpse into a console. Daun’s eyes closed and his body went as limp as Fitz’s. Tychus nodded, then joined Jim as he raced for the stairs.

  Their relief was short-lived. As they headed up the corridor at a dead run, bullets slammed into the bulkhead behind them. The shut and locked door would delay Daun only for a few moments.

  “Thought I’d killed that bastard,” Tychus muttered, unusually pale. On the other side of the door Daun raged, his cybernetic hand punching dents in the thick metal.

  “You pieces of shit! You think you can escape me? No one escapes Ezekiel Daun! Do you hear me? No one! You’ll die in agony, you—”

  Jim tuned out the madman’s rantings and concentrated on the door and the rickety freighter docked there. They’d have to ditch the ship as soon as possible, of course. The Skulls knew it, and now so did Daun. They dove into the cockpit and then turned to each other.

  “Door ain’t opening,” Tychus said.

  “Because someone’s gotta open it, and Daun ain’t gonna oblige,” Jim said.

  “You said there was a manual override for both doors from the bay,” Tychus said.

  “There is, over there. Next to the door to the—”

  Suddenly there came a pounding. Daun had reached the door to the bay and was attacking it. They could hear his voice shouting. They couldn’t understand his words, but they didn’t need to.

  “—corridor,” Jim said.

  “Good to go,” Tychus said. “Keep this door open for me and hang on tight.”

  “What? Tychus—”

  Before Jim could protest, Tychus had already slid from the cockpit and was at the manual override. What was he thinking? He was opening the docking bay door into space! Without a hardskin or at the very least something to hang on to, Tychus Findlay was going to get blown right out.

  Jim frantically prepped the freighter for launch, glancing worriedly at Tychus as the bigger man slammed down the release lever and the door started to iris open.

  “Come on, come on, hurry!” cried Jim.

  Tychus did. The second the lever had clanged down, Tychus Findlay had turned and was covering the space in long strides. The door was opening slowly. Tychus hurled himself toward the open freighter door, big hands clamping down hard as the vacuum of space hungrily sought to pull him out into its embrace.

  Jim raced from the cockpit to the door, leaning over as far as he could, trying to pull Tychus in. Findlay’s muscles strained and quivered, and Jim swore as he saw Tychus’s thick legs being lifted up. Tychus bellowed in anger and, with a last powerful tug, maneuvered himself into the freighter. Few other men could have done it, and even Tychus was red-faced from the brief exposure to the vacuum of space. He was sweating and shaking.

  But he was inside. Jim pr
essed a button and the freighter doors slammed shut.

  The docking bay door was fully open now. Jim threw himself into the pilot’s seat and frantically slammed buttons. The freighter rose, and Jim tried to get it out as fast as possible.

  They shot forward, the drifting debris suddenly becoming an obstacle course they took at high speed. Jim was afraid they’d fly the old vessel apart, but he wanted to get away—now.

  Beside him, Tychus Findlay whooped. “Even if Daun had gotten to us, last we’d see of him would be him dangling like a damned marionette!” he said, wiping his eyes. He flapped his arms disjointedly and mimed choking, his tongue sticking out.

  Jim started to laugh too. It wasn’t that funny, actually, and he knew hysteria when he felt it. But the high-pitched peals of laughter rolling off him released the fear and adrenaline. He felt his whole body shaking, and it was better to laugh at Daun than to feel that sick horror.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Guess we’ve seen the last of him.”

  Tychus sobered slightly. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Jimmy. I’d like to think that, but I think I’ll live longer if I don’t. My one sole desire right now, other than to drink an obscene amount of alcohol, is to get the fekk out of this star system.”

  Jim was quiet for a moment. “I can’t do that. I gotta get back to New Sydney.”

  “What?” Tychus’s bellow nearly deafened Jim. “Madman like that is on our tail, and you want to head right back to where he knows he can find us?”

  “I got a message and—”

  “I got one for you, and that is that Daun is bad news of the absolute worst kind. You hear me?”

  “Who the hell is he, anyway?”

  Tychus folded his arms and sat silently angry for a while. Jim knew him well enough to know that the anger was not directed at him.

  When Tychus spoke, his voice was low and very, very carefully controlled. “I don’t know much for sure, and I thank whatever grace there might be in this universe for that. The rumors and what we just saw are bad enough.”

  “Tychus …,” Jim began. “You know how reliable rumors are. They—”

  “I know my sources, too, Jimmy,” Tychus snapped. “And when I say the rumors I hear would make you crap your pants if I told you half of ’em, you can believe it.”

  Jim did. Nonetheless, he had to know, and Tychus knew it.

  The bigger man ran a hand through his short hair. “He don’t just kill. He drags it out. Likes to torture his victims in every way possible afore he kills ’em. He knows just where and how to hurt. There was one man I heard tell of … Daun didn’t have a deadline on the bounty, so he took his time. Got the man, and his wife. Weren’t no bounty on her, but Daun got her just to play with. Flayed the skin off her first, right in front of the poor son of a bitch. Then did the same to him. Some versions of the stories say he brought a few kilos of salt with him and tried to—”

  “Okay,” Jim snapped. “Enough.”

  Tychus grinned, but it was a sham. “Suffice to say, he’s a bounty hunter. With, from what I understand, a damn good track record.”

  Jim looked bleakly ahead. “Yeah. I got that much. Feek, Ho-barth, Kydd …”

  Tychus nodded, not looking at Jim. “Normally I’d say it’s a good thing when a man likes his job, but … Daun likes it too much. I’m right glad we didn’t see what he did to Hobarth and Feek, Jimmy. I will tell you that with my whole heart. What he did to Kydd was bad enough.”

  Jim listened. He had seen enough as well. Daun recorded his kills. Used them to terrify others he planned to kill, watched them alone at home and relived the moment, just like he said he did. Sick bastard.

  “We just got away from him. We must’ve had angels on our shoulders.”

  “No we didn’t.” Jim’s voice was bitter and hard and came from a place of pain and impotent anger. “We had a sap named Fitz-something who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That poor fellow saved our lives and lost his.”

  “Better him than us,” Tychus said bluntly, then added, “and better he died the way he did than the way the other souls on that station probably died.”

  That, Jim had no answer for.

  Tychus grunted, rubbed his face, and sat up, looking more like his old self again. “Now we gotta ditch this ship and acquire another one, and we need to do it fast. Deadman’s Port is just a jump away. I say we go there.”

  Jim was silent.

  Tychus continued. “Deadman’s Port is—”

  “I know what it is,” Jim snapped. “And I know who runs it.”

  He was pissed, and for a lot of reasons, not just because Tychus thought he didn’t know about the place. Everyone knew about Deadman’s Port. It had been around for a long time, in one incarnation or another, but always it had been a place for hiding out, conducting dark business, and watching your back even when you were with your friends.

  Deadman’s Port was a major city—if you could call it that—located on the planet known as, logically enough, Deadman’s Rock. The place was a dumping ground and scrap yard that made the one they had just left look like a fine town house in Tarsonis City. Bars, gambling halls, brothels, and drug dens had sprung up among the rusting metal husks of long-abandoned ships and vehicles, like vermin finding hidey-holes in humanity’s litter. Little was permanent, except the fact that wherever you went on the place, you could find something illegal, illicit, ill-gotten, or ill-advised.

  And the man who ran it was the king of slimeballs.

  Scutter O’Banon.

  He thought longingly of Wicked Wayne’s, of Misty and of Evangelina, of the good booze and cheerful laughter and comfortable beds. He wondered if it would ever be safe for him to return.

  “Jimmy, we got Ezekiel Daun on our tail,” Tychus said with exaggerated patience, interrupting Jim’s brooding. “I know you ain’t too keen on O’Banon, and I know my bringing it up makes you sore and all, but the man does have a very wide sphere of influence. I’d go a long way and do a great many things to have Daun quit sniffing around for me. And if you don’t agree after what you saw back there”—he jerked a thumb over his shoulder in a quick, harsh gesture—“then you are just plumb crazy.”

  Jim thought about it. Getting another message from Myles had made him uneasy. He didn’t much care for the idea of not finding out at least what the situation was.

  And then in his mind’s eye he saw Daun in his duster, white teeth grinning through his goatee, cybernetic arm catching the light. He saw the hologram of his friend getting strangled and a bloody, silvery hand punching through a man’s chest.

  A shudder shivered through him. Tychus was right: if Myles really needed him, he’d send another message on the fone, and Jim would know it was truly urgent.

  Until then …

  “Tell me the coordinates for Deadman’s Port.” Jim sighed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DEADMAN’S PORT, DEADMAN’S ROCK

  It was, quite possibly, the single ugliest place Jim had ever seen. A sickly gray haze hung over everything, raw and malodorous and thick. The “port,” as it were, was little more than a cleared-off area. Dull-eyed men let them land and not very subtly examined the freighter. Tychus indicated that said freighter might just be for sale. An offensively low offer was made. Tychus stated that the men had prostitutes for mothers and suggested a much higher price. Another slightly less offensive offer was made. Tychus and Jim shrugged, took the credits, and off they went.

  Whereas most planets had trees, this place had rusted-out ships dotting the “landscape,” with venues for traffic haphazardly weaving in and out of them. Vermin, animal and human, scuttled about furtively. Prostitutes made lewd propositions. They looked canny and hungry and dangerous, and once again Jim thought longingly of Wicked Wayne’s, of the laughter and sense of fellowship and play. There was a reek about this place that had nothing to do with the pollution or the smells of unwashed bodies or waste matter in the streets. It was the reek of hopelessness, of coming to the end of the l
ine. This might indeed be where people went to remake themselves, but not in any positive way. If this was what flourished with Scutter O’Banon at the helm, it only reinforced Jim’s idea that he didn’t want anything to do with the man.

  And then he thought of Ezekiel Daun.

  “Can’t swing a cat without hitting a whore,” Tychus said, approval in his voice. “And a bar every other place. I think I like this town, Jim.”

  They moved on, and Jim felt the back of his neck prickling. Casually, he looked over his shoulder. The streets were lively, certainly, but there were a couple of men who seemed to have more purposeful strides than most.

  “Can you spare some food or change?” came a small voice down in the vicinity of his knee. The child was pale and dirty, his face pinched, his eyes too large for his small face. But even on that young visage was a look of craftiness, and Jim pulled back. Others appeared out of nowhere, converging upon him and Tychus with gripping little hands and words professing hunger and cold and need.

  Jim frowned and tried to push the children off. “Get off me afore I drop-kick your tiny asses into the next star system,” Tychus growled, much less restrained with the little gaggle of pests.

  Before Jim realized what was happening, the throng of kids had deftly steered him and Tychus off the main street area into what passed in this place for an alleyway. Alarm shot through him and he pushed harder at the children, who now, as if responding to some unheard signal, scuttled back.

  Four large men filled the entryway. Jim recognized two of them. They were the men who had bought the freighter.

  “What’s the matter, boys?” Tychus drawled lazily. “I ain’t never before seen men scared enough to let children do their dirty work.”

  The men sneered. “Seems you tried to pass a piece of junk off on us,” one of them said. “We don’t much care for that.”