It was always that way with the House of Reason. Blame the victims and apologize for the perpetrators.
He’d stopped asking “why” a long time ago.
Why try to understand insanity?
Instead he was trying, in his own unspoken way, in some part of his own consciousness he was barely aware of… he was trying to save everyone from them. He was trying to save the galaxy from the House of Reason and all its toadying toadies. All its cronying cronies.
He was, if you thought about it, trying to save them from themselves.
And when they fire you…
He finished the tea and turned out the light at his desk.
Then it will all be someone else’s job.
He imagined fishing… if they let him live.
And what of Tom?
His assignment is over. He can go back to being that other person he once was.
But even X knows this is a lie. A comforting and polite lie. But a lie nonetheless.
And still…
X walks through the quiet offices of the Carnivale. Everyone is gone. They’ll be back tomorrow to play their little games. But for tonight, on this early evening, they have all gone home to their loved ones. They will hold them tight and lie awake, knowing they must protect them from the darkness.
And Tom?
X steps out onto the street. It is empty and silent and only the shop down the way casts any light beyond the orange streetlights battling the light night mist.
And Tom?
The House of Reason wanted to give him a medal.
X smirked bitterly, knowing what they had in mind and seeing it for all its awful crassness and craven manipulation.
They wanted to award him the Order of the Centurion, in fact.
And of course all the Legion generals went nuts.
But as ever, the House of Reason had its way, playing its dirty laundry games to ever get what it wanted.
Why, X asked his man inside.
Why give the man who was partly responsible for so many Republic deaths their highest honor? The Order of the Centurion.
Because, he told you—your man inside, your savvy operator—because it makes everyone dirty. And dirt ensures everyone will remain nice and silent.
And so you went, Tom. You went to the award ceremony and looked as sick about it as I felt. And you stood there with Legion brass not even bothering to show and some low-level functionary presenting the award you can never admit to.
And you smiled in your navy uniform, because after all it’s a pretty big deal for anyone outside the Legion to ever get an award for “disregarding one’s life in service to the mission of the Legion and its brotherhood.”
That’s what your medal commendation read, Tom.
I don’t think you even looked at it all that rainy afternoon as I did your last debrief and walked you to a speeder that took you back to your old life. To that other name.
You felt phony, Tom.
And they wanted it that way.
Shame abounds. No one ever wins but the House of Reason.
I watched you go. Back to where you came from. Back to where we summoned you from. Back to them, your wife and child and your other life.
I did want to tell you something, Tom. I wanted to tell you that long before I was X, ringmaster of the Carnivale, I was a kid in a bucket. A legionnaire. And I can tell you, Tom, you did legionnaire’s work out there in the dark.
They’ll never know it.
They’d tell you that’s a lie.
But I know what it cost you.
I know what you bought.
You disregarded your life for the mission.
You earned the Order of the Centurion.
And no one will ever know it.
So I’ll let you go now, thinks X as he watches the train depart. The train carrying “Tom.”
You’ll ride that train for the rest of the day, and by late afternoon you’ll reach the private estates of your grandfather. The famous admiral. The one whose shadow you were raised in. The one you’ve always been measured against, even by yourself.
I know you, even though your name is no longer Tom. I know you’ll walk the last miles from the station to your ancestral home. And I don’t want to think about what you’ll think about. I only hope you’ll find some pleasant memory that’s enough to hold on to… knowing what you’ll have to do next.
Knowing that you’re a sinner seeking absolution. Knowing that she’s your priest. Wondering if she’ll forgive you for saving everyone.
I hope you’re not thinking you have to tell her about the dead, the lies, the murders, and all that other “Tom” life. But I do suspect you’ll confess to Illuria… because you’re that kind of man. You will have to tell her the truth. Because someone must know. Someone must have the opportunity to forgive you, Tom.
Someone.
In time you’ll reach the door.
And they will have seen you coming from afar, like some fabled hero from our shared ancient history. Some warrior who sailed the seas and bested monsters and came home changed.
She’ll be watching you from a window high in the nursery. She’s been doing that since you left. Waiting for you. Because she loves you.
The whole house will erupt at her sudden cry. Knowing you’ve come back. Knowing you’re alive. Just knowing.
Because where you’ve been… there’s no knowing.
And because she loves you, she’ll take up your child from her crib and rush down the stairs, racing ahead of the bots and your father who can’t believe this wonderful thing that has happened. She’s racing ahead of them all to claim ownership of you.
And when the door opens and she’s openly weeping, you’ll smile, and she’ll briefly sense something and ignore it because…
Because…
Because… you’re back. And that is enough.
She won’t see the look of too many done things. Or all the dead and shame of such things.
Or Illuria.
She will see only you.
And because she is a mother, she will hold out your greatest prize. The tiny bundle of life you were saving the galaxy for. As though she too is a soldier giving a report of duty maintained and service faithfully rendered.
And in that moment when you hold the tiny bundle close to you and dare the galaxy to come between you…
Will it all have been worth it?
Will it?
I know, thinks X. I know you will be thinking about that Tom-not-Tom. I know you will hold her and whisper your daughter’s name…
“Prisma.”
Yes. Because someone must.
And…
The shuttle that hauled them out to the edge, the very edge of the galaxy, was crewed by Repub Navy types, wearing civilian clothes.
Anonymity was the order. Scarpia guessed they were about to be quietly disappeared.
Frogg would have known the type who did this kind of work. Known they were killers. Takes one to know one, he would have thought to himself with a grim sense of satisfaction. And during the jump he and Scarpia would have kept to themselves in their bunks.
They would’ve made a plan. A plan to bargain, kill, deal, manipulate their way out of this. But honestly, there was no way out of this one. This was… the end.
“Close one, that,” Scarpia would have murmured as they lay in their bunks. Frogg would have been above and thinking his silent, ever murderous thoughts.
Scarpia wondered if he would ever see Illuria again. Only briefly wondered. Wondered what she was doing and if she was happy. At this final end-of-things moment that seemed of some import to him.
He closed his eyes and listened to the nothingness of hyperspace. To him it was like a howling void that could never be satisfied.
A day later they landed on a dry desert world. Way out beyond any kind of life. Barren sands, burning heat, and the flinty ranges of distant jagged-cut mountains promised nothing remotely resembling life.
It was then, as the Repub
Navy types ushered them out onto the hard-packed dirt of a long-dead lakebed that Frogg would have murmured, “I think they’re going to cut us loose here, chief.”
Frogg was dead. But Scarpia heard him. Scarpia only had Froggy left. And he was just a ghost.
Scarpia swallowed hard. His baleful eyes took them all in and glanced down at Frogg. Yes. For all intents and purposes it did look like they were about to be abandoned to their fate.
A fate that most likely promised starvation, heat stroke, and extreme dehydration.
They wouldn’t last two days out here. Wherever here was. And it’s nice to know the name of the place where you’re going to die. Not required. But nice all the same.
The end wouldn’t be pretty. That was for sure.
Once they’d been backed far enough away from the shuttle, it raised its boarding ramp, spooled up its engines, and lifted off on the hum of its repulsors. Gears folding inward, pilot pivoting for course track.
And then…
Silence.
The silence of the desert.
The silence of their minds dealing with their impending mortality.
The silence of arriving at the end of all your bad decisions.
Scarpia was sure Frogg would snap and murder him right there on the dry clay of an ancient lake. Get one last one in before…
They began to walk toward the low mountains.
They walked for the better part of a day. At night they lay down behind a rock and watched the few stars come out. Their mouths were dry and thirsty for moisture. In fact, they were already dying of thirst.
The next day they crossed over the low jagged mountains with fantasies of some small outpost on the other side. A place of water, and cold beer, and smoked meats.
Each of them not daring to make their final confessions for all the evils they’d done. But close to…
That would be a kind of heaven, a paradise to them.
But what they saw on the other side of the mountains was even more stunning.
On the plain below, the mammoth keels of what must be three massive battleships lay alongside one another. Construction crews moved about the distant and massive ships like tiny ants. And beyond this was some kind of sprawling military compound comprised of wire, high towers, and wide, watched kill zones. Within it lay tents and barracks and concrete bunkers. But it was all empty, for the most part anyway, a place waiting to be filled. Expectant for the promise of a future.
Yet it was the incredible and gargantuan ships that lay out there below them, like the skeletons of prehistoric monsters out there in the waste, that captured Scarpia’s imagination. Froggy’s, too. They would be nothing like anything the galaxy had ever seen. The ships were immense, and they were identical.
They heard the Repub Navy shuttle in the skies above. A different one this time. One with an admiral’s flag stenciled near the cockpit. A moment later it set down near them on the ridge, blasting them with boiling dust and flung grit.
Scarpia raised his long hands to his eyes to shield them. Frogg merely watched like some murderous little animal determined to kill and live for as long as the time remaining to it.
The boarding ramp lowered, and out came a navy captain. He walked briskly toward them.
He was smiling.
“Mr. Scarpia…”
Scarpia and Frogg stared dumbly back.
“Commander Devers sends his welcome, sir.”
The officer turned to the massive ships. He gazed at them with adoration and pride. Then he turned back to the two desert wanderers.
To Scarpia the arms dealer and Frogg the deceased murderer.
“Do we have your attention now, Mr. Scarpia?” the officer asked. “Because we’re going to need a lot of weapons.”
The ghost of Frogg licked his dry and cracked lips.
Scarpia looked down at Froggy. Then up at the officer.
A lot of weapons.
Scarpia gave a thin smile of satisfaction.
More Galaxy's Edge
Available September 2017…
Galaxy’s Edge: Attack of Shadows
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Robert Anspach
Sean Averill
Steve Beaulieu
Steve Bergh
Wilfred Blood
Christopher Boore
Rhett Bruno
Marion Buehring
Peter Davies
Nathan Davis
Peter Francis
Chris Fried
Hank Garner
Michael Greenhill
Josh Hayes
Angela Hughes
Wendy Jacobson
Chris Kagawa
Mathijs Kooij
William Kravetz
Clay Lambert
Grant Lambert
Richard Long
Danyelle Leafty
Preston Leigh
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Tao Mason
Simon Mayeski
Jim Mern
Alex Morstadt
Nate Osburn
Chris Pourteau
Maggie Reed
Karen Reese
Glenn Shotton
Maggie Stewart-Grant
Kevin Summers
Beverly Tierney
Scott Tucker
John Tuttle
Christopher Valin
Scot Washam
Justin Werth
Justyna Zawiejska
N. Zoss
Kill Team (Galaxy's Edge Book 3) Page 24
