Seeing an area of the city he recognized, he changed direction once again and sprinted toward a small market that he knew. It was deserted at this time of the night, but the empty stalls were still set up. Nero slowed as he reached them, and hearing the robot approach, he pulled some of the heavy stalls over. He heard loud crashing sounds as they hit the ground, and then more sounds as the robot stumbled into the carnage. Nero sped up again, and once more entered the maze of alleyways. This time, however, when he glanced back, he didn’t see the robot. The delay had obviously been just enough to lose it.
He kept running for another few minutes, but when there was still no sign of the robot behind him, he finally slowed down, to what most would consider a normal running pace. Then he got his bearings, and headed into the centre of the city, to find a Scraper.
****
The first rays of the sun burst over the horizon, painting the side of the warehouse a pale orange in colour. The man stood outside, dressed from head to foot in dark grey armour, didn’t notice the beauty of this, however. Instead, he watched as two members of the Nostra emerged from the main doors, and walked over to him.
“It is done, signore,” said one of the men, looking anywhere but at the man’s helmet. “The shuttles, too.”
“Very good,” the armoured man replied, taking the small control unit the other man offered. He pressed a couple of buttons on the holodisplay, and then looked back up at the building in front of him. With the main doors still open, he could see the shuttles lined up along one wall, which belonged to the man who had given them such trouble.
Looking back down at the control unit, the man pressed the final button in the sequence, and then the world shook. The orange light of the sun was drowned out by the massive fireball that erupted in front of him, shooting skywards and outwards. The warehouse was instantly destroyed, pieces of metal fragments flying outwards in all directions.
The force of the explosion knocked the two members of the Nostra backwards, but the Aegis agent remained standing, seemingly unaffected by the violence of the explosion. He turned to look at the aliens on the ground next to him, and noticed that one had a large shard of metal sticking out of his chest. His eyes had a vacant look. The Aegis agent turned his attention to the other man, who appeared shaken, but unhurt.
Shame, the armoured man thought. When the Nostra man had got back on his feet, the Aegis agent reached out and grabbed the other by his neck, and calmly ripped out his trachea, as simply as if he was opening a door. The man dropped to the ground, his hands going up to stem the flow of blood from his neck. It was a fruitless task.
With his task complete, the armoured man turned around, and left the smouldering wreck of the warehouse, and the two corpses, behind him.
****
The men ran, jumping up from where they were huddled and heading towards the door. The Aegis agent laughed at their futile attempt at escape. These former members of Nero’s organisation stood no chance. The agent slowly followed them, and walked through the door they had run through. Not far along the alley outside, they had all frozen in place, none able to move faced with the trio of robots stood silently in front of them.
One of the men, obviously one of the quicker-witted ones, turned around and started to flee in the opposite direction. The Aegis agent didn’t bother to stop him as he ran past, content to watch the robots do their job.
The middle robot suddenly jumped, leaping over the heads of the other men, who still didn’t know what to do, and ran after the escapee. The speed at which the robot could run still impressed the Aegis agent, and the robot caught up to the man almost instantly. It slowed down to match the man’s speed, and then reached out and picked him up by the neck.
With seemingly no effort, the robot then punched the man in his back with incredible force, the robotic hand punching a hole clean through the man’s chest. It dropped the man, who stayed collapsed on the floor. The robot then returned to the other few men who hadn’t run, and who had watched the brief pursuit in amazement. They cowered back from the robot as it approached.
The Aegis agent watched as the three robots then stepped forward in unison, forming up into a triangle formation around the humans. They approached, and before the agent could blink, the robots attacked the group. Their movement was just a blur, and moments later, the remaining members of Nero’s organisation lay dead on the ground, in a slowly seeping pool of their own blood.
The armoured man smiled behind his mask, and walked down the alley, the robots falling into formation behind him.
****
Stood before the pile of red pills, the Aegis agent wondered why they were so popular. But then it remembered how backward these planets were at the edge of the galaxy. They didn’t even have basic mind enhancements, so perhaps the pills’ popularity was understandable.
Dismissing the thoughts, the agent opened its hand to reveal what looked like a small orange lozenge, about three centimetres long. It casually tossed the object into the pile of red pills, and watched as the orange pill began to glow. After a short time, when it was hot enough, it burst into flames, setting the surrounding red pills on fire.
They combusted almost instantly, with an incredibly intense heat, the flames feeding on whatever energy was in the pills. The fire soon spread over the entire pile, and the thousands of pills burnt away to a crisp in almost no time. All that remained after a minute or so was a small pile of smoking black ash, which the Aegis agent casually walked over to get to the door.
It turned to look back at the room, as if to check no pills had survived the blaze, and then walked out, another trace of the drug dealer’s organisation erased from existence.
****
Nero approached carefully. He hadn’t seen anyone since breaking into the Scraper, besides a couple of residents once he’d reached the floor near the top, but he expected Aegis around every corner. A strange noise made him freeze, but it turned out to be someone leaving their apartment behind him. She gave Nero a strange look, but continued on her way.
He carried on along the corridor, fearful of what he was going to find, but knowing he had to continue. Slowly, he neared the door he was searching for, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The number above the door illuminated as he walked up to it, and he reached out to open the door.
It slid open, and Nero cautiously walked in, the lights turning on automatically as he entered. He wished they hadn’t. Lying sprawled on the floor, in the centre of the room, was a body. A relatively small body, clothed in a fine dress. Wanting to turn away, to run out of the room, Nero slowly walked forward, approaching the body, and crouched down next to it.
“Ami...” he whispered, looking at her perfect form, collapsed on the floor, with a laser hole in the middle of her chest. She looked remarkably peaceful, lying there, except for her eyes. They were open, and staring sightlessly into the distance. Tenderly, Nero reached over and closed them, cursing himself for not being there to protect her.
He sat down the ground, and stayed there for an indeterminate length of time, not wanting to leave her. Not wanting to admit that it was his fault she was dead. He had lost everyone, everything, and he was only alive thanks to his augmentations. But what good were augs if he couldn’t use them to save anybody except for himself? Nothing about this was fair. He thought about Talyah, about all the good times he’d had with her. She had been one of his best friends for over a decade. And he thought about Onon, and all the others. He hoped they’d known that he had cared about them.
More time passed, but eventually, Nero stood back up, a decision made. Without another look at the body lying on the floor, he left the apartment, heading purposefully back to the lifts. Receiving strange looks from passersby, he entered a lift, and descended all the way to the ground floor. He left the Scraper through the window he’d smashed on the way in, and walked along the street outside, heading towards the outskirts of the city.
It was a long way to walk, but he didn’t feel like runni
ng. It was time to think, at any rate. After a while he emerged from the Scraper-dense area of the city, and continued through the slums and deserted areas that made up the vast outskirts of the city. He kept on going, the sun having risen fully in the sky whilst he walked.
By the time he neared his destination, the sun had already begun to go down, so far had he gone. The structure in front of him was almost falling down, but it did still have four walls, and a roof, of sorts, over the top. Nero paused, and then pushed his way through the door that was hanging off its hinges.
Inside, the building wasn’t nearly as abandoned as it looked from the outside. Sat in the centre of the shack was a large container, secured with a padlock. Nero walked to it, and placed his finger on the scanner. On reading the chip, the padlock flashed green and opened, allowing Nero to pull open the doors to the container.
Inside, a menacing presence in the darkness, was a small shuttle, black and wedge-shaped. It was small enough that there was only room for one person, and the transparent canopy over the cockpit sat open, waiting for that person to enter.
Nero stepped forward, and climbed onto the small shuttle. Before climbing into the pilot’s seat, he reached up and opened the roof of the container, the two halves opening up and outwards. He then squeezed himself down into the cockpit, and slid the canopy closed above him. He pressed the glowing green ‘activate’ button in front of him, and the ion engines turned on, filling the container with an eerie blue light.
The ship lifted off the ground, and the landing gear retracted. Increasing the power, the ship rose further, and emerged out of the container, pushing its way through the flimsy roof of the shack. The late afternoon sunlight made its way into the cockpit, and Nero squinted slightly as his eyes adjusted. Then he spun the ship around, and angled it upwards.
Increasing the thrust from the engines, the speed rapidly increased, producing a loud bang as the ship passed the speed of sound, and very quickly it rose through the planet’s atmosphere. Nero was pushed back into his seat as the inertial compensators struggled to compensate for the acceleration, but very shortly, the ship ceased accelerating as it left the upper reaches of the planet’s atmosphere.
As the sky outside turned black, Nero turned in his seat, and took one final look at the planet he was leaving behind. Then he looked forward again, forcing himself to forget about the planet, and altered the ship’s course slightly as he engaged the ship’s spacetime distorters. He watched as the stars disappeared, and the small shuttle entered the strange world of the space-between-space.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ON THE RUN
A pale brown orb loomed out of the blackness in front of the ship, complete with areas glistening brightly in the light of the sun. Nero brought the speed of the ship down, relieved to finally be back in normal space again. The ship being as small as it was, it couldn’t get up to the sort of speeds normal shuttles could get up to, and he’d therefore spent a long time trapped in the confines of the single-seater cockpit.
He corrected the course slightly, and watched as the orange-brown planet got larger as he approached. When he was near the outer layers of the planet’s atmosphere, he saw a few other ships either arriving at or leaving the planet. That in itself was a strange sight for Nero, who was used to the relative quietness of Dimora, but equally strange was the surface of the planet itself. Now that he was closer, he could see that most of the planet was covered by water, with only a few small areas above the level of the water that were dry.
And these areas weren’t just dry, they were desert. Nero directed his ship to the largest patch of land that he could see, which was only large enough for one city, and found that the streets were essentially just strips of sandy, rocky ground. The buildings themselves were sandy in colour, made of some material Nero couldn’t recognise, and none were more than three levels high. It gave the city an oddly quaint air as Nero flew his ship over it.
On the far side of the city was the spaceport. Larger than any Nero had seen before, larger than any on Dimora, the city obviously did a thriving trade with other planets. He watched as five ships took off in quick succession, whilst another seven ships landed. Nero joined the stream of ships that were landing, and the shuttle’s AI computer interfaced with the port’s computer to find a free landing pad for him.
The small shuttle shuddered slightly as the thrust from the engines was reduced, and Nero maneuvered the ship down into the comically-oversized landing pad that he’d been assigned. He cut the ion engines once he had landed, and slid the canopy open.
“Welcome to Aellyn,” came the bored voice of an attendant as soon as Nero climbed out. “Please register your ship here,” he said, handing Nero a holodisplay with blank fields to fill in. Glancing at the man, who was dressed in dirty overalls and had grime all over his hands, he took the display and typed in some random details. “Enjoy your stay,” came the bored reply as the man walked away, leaving Nero to find his own way out of the spaceport.
As he made his way to the exit, he looked around at the spaceport, noticing how beautiful it was. The sandy structures that made up the buildings and walls were like nothing he had ever seen, almost looking like they grew organically out of the sandy ground.
Spotting a glowing red sign above the nearest building, which read ‘Welcome to Aellyn’, he made his way over and stepped inside. Away from all the ships taking off and landing, it was filled with people. Most were purposefully making their way through the place, heading out on some unknown errand, whilst others were stopped and talking with others. Perhaps negotiating a trade of some sort, Nero thought.
He made his way through, squeezing past a particularly large man, his belly hanging over his ill-fitting trousers. Nero shuddered and carried on, looking around the place as he went.
“Can I be of assistance, signore?” An attractive voice came from Nero’s right, near the exit of the spaceport. He looked over to see a young woman, dressed in similar overalls to the port worker he had seen, but they were clean on the woman, and fitted her much better.
“Er,” Nero started, and then recovered himself. “Yeah, maybe you could tell me where to find a bar? One where I might find some work, you know?”
The young woman smiled, and gave him a knowing look. “That sort of work, is it?” she asked. Apparently the rumours Nero had heard about this planet were correct. “There’s a place down the main street, called Mikkel’s. It’s hard to miss. You should find what you’re looking for there.”
“Thanks,” Nero replied, and turned to go.
“You know, I’ll be over there myself when I get off work in an hour. Maybe I’ll see you there?”
Nero turned back to look at the woman. She was attractive, very attractive, and normally he would have said yes in a heartbeat. But his thoughts drifted back to Ami. “Sure,” he replied, with a smile, not knowing whether he wanted her or not. Whether he wanted to forget about Ami or not.
With that, he left the bustling spaceport, and emerged onto what was presumably the main street in the city. It was very wide, covered with sand, and it was almost as busy as the spaceport had been. People - humans and a number of alien species - pushed hover-boards around, getting in the way of each other and frequently pausing to shout obscenities.
Nero weaved through the organised chaos and made his way down the street, on the lookout for Mikkel’s. He passed a number of bars that looked promising, with signs outside advertising all sorts of services inside the seedy premises. But he carried on. It wasn’t long before he noticed a particularly busy building on the left of the street, which, unlike most of the buildings surrounding it, had a second floor. At the top of the building, in large green letters, was the word ‘Mik el’s’. Apparently the second ‘k’ had fallen off.
He pushed his way past the crowd of people milling around outside, managing to knock a tiny alien over, who promptly launched a tirade of abuse at Nero, and ducked through the low doorway to enter the dingy confines of the bar.
; A set of steps descended from the entrance, leading to a large, circular room with tables and chairs scattered almost at random across the floor. Nearly every chair was occupied, however, and the crowd at the bar itself was at least two people deep in most places. Nero glanced at the nearest table, and saw three people huddled over it, discussing something in hushed voices. They looked sharply at Nero when one of them noticed him looking.
Walking down the steps, he made his way over to the bar. A couple of bedraggled-looking men were deep in conversation, and Nero used the opportunity to squeeze through to the front of the crowd, and managed to attract the barman’s attention. The portly alien waddled over to Nero, apron straining to contain the bulk of the creature.
“What will it be?” the alien asked in a deep, gravelly voice. Its jowls shook as it spoke.
“Something strong,” Nero replied, neither knowing what he could order, nor caring. The barman turned his back on Nero and placed a glass under the dispenser. A thick stream of some dark liquid rushed out of the nozzle and filled the mug. When the barman gave the drink to Nero, a strong earthy smell wafted up from the mug. He took a sip with a certain amount of suspicion, but it turned out to be pretty good. It had a strangely tangy, rich taste. And it also had an impressive kick. He took a bigger sip.
The barman had already moved on to the next customer, and Nero turned away from the bar. Pushing back past the two bedraggled men, he spotted a vacant table part way across the room. Increasing his pace, he made it there just in front of an alien, who managed to pull such a sorry-looking face that Nero almost let it have the table. But then he realised how exhausted he was, and instead took it for himself.
For a time, he just sat at the table and watched life go by in the busy establishment. There was a constant stream of people entering and leaving the bar, many of whom didn’t even stop long enough for a drink. Many of them just looked around, spotted someone they knew, and headed over to sit at their table for a while. Sometimes, Nero saw a small parcel change hands, and sometimes they just talked. There always seemed to be a brusque air to the exchanges, however, and a feeling of enforced civility. As if they were conversations neither party particularly enjoyed.
On Galaxy's Edge: Ascendance Page 25
