Still, where was Ekavir? Where was the one who sent these villagers to die? Pitt continued to search, but found nothing. The Jade General had vanished into the jungle.
The repairs complete, KB-8E led Magnus Black through the dense jungle. Minute amounts of organic matter, left by Draconians passing by, clung to the leaves and hung in the air, all recorded and analyzed by the sensors in the killbot’s head. Following this unseen trail, the robot and the human found themselves in the remains of a town just as the sun was rising over the canopy. Above the village, the blue sky stared down like a hole in a roof.
“It appears General Ekavir came through here,” KB-8E said.
“If you say so,” Magnus replied, eyeing the stone buildings, the doorways and windows blackened with soot. “Do you see this damage?”
“The town appears to have burned.”
“With a little help from above,” Magnus remarked, pointing at the gap in the canopy. “An orbital strike...”
“It seems the inhabitants had little chance of survival.”
“That’s the idea.”
Magnus leaned against a broken wall, taking a drink from his canteen. His feet were nearly submerged in ashes. The robot waited patiently.
“Do you have much experience on this planet?” KB-8E asked.
Capping the canteen, Magnus hooked it back onto his belt. “Yeah.”
“May I ask when?”
“It’s been a while,” the human said. “I wasn’t much older than twenty. I kinda fell into service with the Imperium and was good at it.”
“Good at what exactly?”
“Killing.”
“Would you say you were made for it?” the robot asked.
Magnus gave the machine a side glance. “Like you?”
“Indeed,” KB-8E replied. “I was built for my function. I have no other.”
“Well, you didn’t have much of a choice, did you? I suppose I did.”
“I sometimes wonder...”
“Yeah?”
“If perhaps I could do other things besides killing.”
Magnus snickered. “Like a hobby?”
The killbot lacked a mouth so it wasn’t able to smile, although it sometimes wished it could.
“I mean whether I could perform other functions,” it said, “that did not require ending someone’s life.”
“Hell if I know,” Magnus admitted. “You’re a slave to your programming, I guess.”
“Indeed.”
After a long pause, Magnus asked, “Why did Colonel Grausman assign you this mission?”
“Actually,” the robot replied, “he sent several units like myself. However, I remain the only one still in operation.”
“Serves the colonel right,” Magnus said. “Don’t send a robot to do a man’s job.”
“Do you resent him sending robots?”
“Like I said before, I don’t like them.”
“Why is that?”
“You kill a man, he stays down,” Magnus went on. “Destroy a robot and they just build more.”
“True,” KB-8E said. “We can always build more killbots...”
When Ekavir, the Jade General, was still a young Draconian, his father told him about the virtues that made them a proud, honorable race. His father spoke of courage, wisdom, and loyalty, and how the human invaders lacked these things. The Imperium, with all its wealth and technology, was a dim spark compared to the fire of the Draconian spirit.
“They’re barbarians,” his father said. “Never forget that.”
Ekavir was little more than a teenager, in relative terms, when he saw his first battle. A patrol of Imperial soldiers made the mistake of taking the same trail once too often, allowing the resistance fighters to set up an ambush. In the murky light of the jungle, the green scales of the Draconians blended with the leaves and branches, giving the rebels the perfect element of surprise. Armed with a warstaff, Ekavir dropped from a tree onto one of the unsuspecting soldiers. For years later, he remembered the eyes of the human, blue like the sky, but wide with the fear of his impending death. Ekavir hacked the man’s head from his shoulders, the body going limp like a sack of loose vegetables. What Ekavir found most shocking was not the blood or the screaming, but the ease at which these humans died. Their skin was soft and their bones weak. They crumbled with such little prodding that he couldn’t understand how they could rule an empire such as the Imperium.
It was unbelievable.
Over time, as Ekavir grew older, he developed contempt for the humans. They were not just barbarians. They were cowards. They used their weapons to strike from a distance, even from high above in orbit. He understood why. They were too fragile to face the Draconians in hand-to-hand combat, unless they wore suits of armor like robotic warriors.
It sickened him.
What really bothered Ekavir, however, was that these weaklings kept winning. The humans could be killed; that much was not debatable, but there were always more. For every soldier the Dracs killed, ten more arrived from off-planet. It was unending. No matter how many humans died, freedom for Ekavir’s people remained always in the distance, never closer than the horizon.
Now grown and an experienced insurgent, Ekavir began leading attacks against the invaders. He developed new tactics too. Instead of waiting in the jungle, he and his agents planted bombs in the places were the humans lived and worked. There were sometimes casualties among his own people, but they were the price that had to be paid for freedom. Their deaths were blood spilled for the revolution. Ekavir was confident they would have laid down their lives willingly if he had merely asked.
The years dragged on, but he never wavered or lost hope. The words of his father remained in his ears long after his father had died in an Imperial reprisal. The humans could not break Ekavir’s spirit, no matter how many Draconians they lined up to be shot.
However, not everyone was as strong. Some of his people questioned his methods. They suggested dialog and negotiations, even as they lived in chains. This bothered Ekavir even more than the humans. This weakness in the face of the enemy could not be forgotten or forgiven. Those who were not for him, were against him and, naturally, his enemy. They, too, must suffer the consequence of their barbarism.
Squads of his men fanned out into the jungle and the cities alike, looking for collaborators. These traitors were pulled from their homes, sometimes with their families watching. It was only right that they died within view of those they had betrayed. Ekavir took no pleasure in these killings, but he knew in his heart that only the strength of honor could lead to salvation and banishing the human invaders.
Even so, the bombing of the Green Zone, where the humans kept their spouses and children, was a miscalculation. The videos of the dead, played hourly by the Imperial propaganda machine, weakened Ekavir in the eyes of his people. The friends he knew he could trust suddenly were no longer reliable. The safe places became dangerous and the strikes from the sky became more frequent. All the while, he retreated deeper into the jungle.
With a machete, Magnus Black hacked at a particularly stubborn vine blocking their path. The jungle had grown ever thicker, slowing their progress. KB-8E considered using its particle beam but doing so, with the associated smoke and possible flames, would ruin any chance of surprising the Jade General. The killbot waited impassively as Magnus made a final swing, severing the vine in two.
“Have you worked with robots a great deal?” KB-8E asked suddenly.
Magnus wiped his face with the forearm of his shirt. “What?”
“You said you don’t like robots,” the robot went on. “I wondered how much time you’ve actually spent working with them.”
Magnus turned his eyes toward the machete in his hands as if contemplating something.
“Machines are everywhere,” he said. “You can’t kick a sweeperbot without hitting another sweeperbot.”
“No, I meant working together with a robot, as we are.”
“You mean, like a partner?”<
br />
“Indeed,” KB-8E replied.
Exasperated, the human shook his head. “We’re not partners!”
Without a face, KB-8E could not express emotions, provided it had any. However, the robot’s blinking light stared at Magnus without the machine saying anything.
“Don’t tell me I hurt your feelings?” Magnus said finally.
“I’m not programmed to have feelings,” KB-8E replied.
“Good.”
“In fact,” the killbot added, “I believe humans created killbots to avoid feeling the guilt associated with ending another person’s life.”
“Is that so?”
“How do you deal with your emotions after killing?”
Magnus shrugged. “I don’t give it much thought.”
“That seems wise,” KB-8E said. “Most of your kind seem to ruminate endlessly about their actions.”
“Well, I don’t.”
Magnus reared back to strike the next vine with his machete.
“Perhaps you are what they call a psychopath,” the robot said.
Magnus missed the vine, narrowly missing his own leg by less than an inch.
“That’s a hell of a thing to say!” he growled.
“Or are you a sadist of some kind?”
Shaking the long blade in his hand, Magnus held it threateningly. “I’m none of those things!”
The light on KB-8E’s head blinked several times.
“If you say so,” it said.
“I’m a killer, that’s true,” Magnus replied, “but it’s my job and I’m damn good at it.”
“But you don’t think about those you kill?”
“Do you?” Magnus asked.
“Actually, I do.”
“Bullshit.”
“On the contrary,” the robot said, “although I assume you would consider it a fault in my programming, but I do indeed consider the lives I’ve ended and the consequences of what those lives might have accomplished if I had not ended them.”
Magnus, both his machete and jaw slacking, stared at the killbot.
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
Every morning at around 10 AM, when the temperature and the humidity reached the proper mix, the rain began falling and continued for half an hour before stopping again. It was like clockwork, every day. The drops fell from the heavy clouds, the water winding its way through the tops of the trees down to the jungle floor before emptying into streams and rivers. Swollen with the morning shower, one such river plunged over a rock face as a waterfall into a small lake. A deluge at first but then, the surge past, abating to a trickle, the falling water revealing the entrance to a cave partially flooded by the lake.
Magnus Black, submerged in the muddy water, swam beneath the surface into the cave. He wore a dark gray bodysuit with black goggles and a breathing device clenched between his teeth. A blaster was holstered on his right leg while a long blade was strapped to his left ankle. He could barely see, but he knew that meant the Draconians couldn’t see him either.
The robot had scanned the cave, giving Magnus a general idea of its dimensions. The entrance was narrow but widened into a cavern inside. When Magnus thought he was at the right spot, he risked a look, the top of his head and goggles disturbing the surface. He was beside a boat, woven from palm fibers, partially beached on a parcel of sand. Past the beach, stone steps led up to a flattened area below the ceiling at least fifty feet above. A few huts crowded the plateau, open fires burning between them, with a larger shack on the other side.
The air was thick with the scent of wet lizards.
Hearing someone coming down the steps, Magnus pushed the boat away from the beach.
A Draconian warrior cursed, seeing the craft floating toward the flooded entrance. Wading out to retrieve it, the warrior only got waist deep before Magnus drove a dagger into his heart. The body floated for a moment before sinking.
Slipping out of the water, Magnus left his goggles at the shoreline and inched across the beach, careful to tread lightly over the sand. At the foot of the steps, he listened. Sure that no one else was coming, Magnus climbed the stairs until his eyes peered over the top. Several Draconian warriors, armed mostly with swords or warstaffs, were shuffling around the camp amid the huts. Like the boat, the hovels were constructed from leaves and wood gathered from the jungle outside. Under the domed roof, they looked to be more for privacy than shelter.
With one hand holding his blaster and the other his knife, Magnus crept from the steps to the back of a hut. Thinking he had made little to no noise in the process, Magnus was surprised when a Draconian came crashing through the hut wall, tackling him to the ground.
“What the hell?” Magnus said, both hands pinned.
The Draconian, within inches of Magnus’ face, grinned a mouth full of teeth.
“I can smell a wet human for miles,” the warrior said.
“Good to know,” Magnus replied.
His right arm bent, Magnus extended it, pulling the Drac’s hand out along with it. The warrior’s eyes widened as Magnus contorted his left knee into the Draconian’s leg, knocking him off balance and rolling him over. With their positions reversed and Magnus on top, he fired the blaster, cremating the warrior’s snout and most of his face. Magnus shook off the dead claws still holding his wrists and turned just as several more Dracs came around the side of the hut.
Magnus burned holes in the first two to reach him. A third leapt over the dead warriors, making a wide swing with his warstaff. Magnus felt a surge of pain in his hand as he watched the blaster sail over the edge of the rocks and into the water below.
This is not ideal, he thought to himself.
He dodged the next swing, ducking under it while slicing the warrior’s tendon as he rolled past. Dropping to one knee in agony, the Draconian exposed the back of his neck into which Magnus, jumping back to his feet, drove his blade, severing the spinal column.
Magnus grabbed the Draconian warstaff and buried it into another warrior’s chest. Using his foot as leverage, he pulled the staff free as memories of Bhadra floated back to mind. The raw smell of their blood filled his nostrils. He killed, like before, taking long swaths like a reaper’s scythe through the ranks of the defenders.
He was the intruder. He was the invader. He didn’t care.
No longer wet with water, but drenched in something else, Magnus stood before the large shack at the end. With both hands, he held the warstaff against his waist.
The door, driftwood lashed together with fibers, opened. Ekavir stood in the doorway, backlit by the warm flicker of a fire behind him. In his hands he held a blaster rifle.
Also not ideal, Magnus thought.
“Drop your weapon,” Ekavir said, gesturing with his rifle.
The Draconian warstaff landed in the dusty ground at Magnus’ feet.
“Do you know who I am?” the assassin asked.
The Jade General grinned and nodded. His scales were worn in places, the natural green faded by age.
“The Butcher of Bhadra,” he said. “I recognize you.”
“I don’t recall seeing you there,” Magnus replied.
“I was there.”
“Hiding while your people died?”
“My people sacrificed themselves,” Ekavir said, “so I could escape and continue the battle elsewhere.”
“They paid the price so you could live...”
“So the revolution could live!”
“I’m pretty sure the revolution would’ve survived without you.”
“I am the revolution!”
Magnus chuckled, eyeing the general with his modern weapon.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Seems like it’s already passed you by.”
“No,” Ekavir replied, sticking his chest out. “Long after you’re forgotten, my people will sing songs about me. After the worms have spat you out, I will go on.”
Magnus shook his head.
“Alright then,” he said. “Anytime now.”
&
nbsp; The Jade General raised the blaster rifle, but Magnus wasn’t speaking to him. The tips of two blades burst from Ekavir’s chest. The Draconian gazed down at them with confusion in his eyes as blood came spilling out. When the tips retracted, only to re-emerge moments later, Ekavir roared in pain and fury. He attempted to point the rifle at Magnus, but the weapon fell from his hands, followed close behind by Ekavir himself, falling on top of it.
KB-8E stood within the doorway. The robot’s camouflage emitters flickered off.
“What the hell were you waiting for?” Magnus shouted at the killbot.
“You seemed to be in the middle of a conversation,” KB-8E replied.
Magnus kicked the corpse over so the general was face up. He picked up the blaster rifle.
“The primary target appears to be eliminated,” the robot said, examining the body.
“Yeah,” Magnus replied slowly, “but there was always a secondary target, wasn’t there?”
The killbot looked up. “Sadly, yes.”
The barrel of the robot’s particle beam lit up, just as Magnus rolled to the side. The material of his bodysuit charred at the shoulder, Magnus fired, a hot bolt of plasma impacting KB-8E’s chest in a shower of sparks and molten plastic. The robot fell backwards, landing halfway inside the shack.
When Magnus got back to his feet, he wasn’t sure if the robot was destroyed until he saw the red light blinking on its faceplate.
“Don’t move,” Magnus said.
“I do not think that will be possible,” KB-8E replied, its voice modulating intermittently.
Magnus kept the rifle pointed at the disabled robot. “There was never any deal with Colonel Grausman.”
“Affirmative,” the robot said. “I was to terminate you once the primary target was killed.”
“Why?”
“It is my understanding that his superior officers demanded it.”
The assassin shrugged. “Yeah, that checks out.”
“I regret that I can no longer work alongside you, Mr. Black,” the robot said. “It was interesting.”
Magnus didn’t reply.
“Will you kill Colonel Grausman?” KB-8E asked.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “He’s going to die.”
The Imperium Chronicles Collection, 2nd Edition - Stories Page 15
