Now as he edged over to her naked body, the same weeping sores covered her flesh, the same disease, which in the end would have killed her. All his innocence evaporated, he finally realized that he was alone, abandoned into this universe. He had covered his mother’s mutilated body with a clean sheet, packed up a few things and he had left.
A noise drove him from the memory, a door opening, the metal creaking, and stretching. He leapt up towards the steam pipes, which criss-crossed the roof of his cell and heaved himself up wrapping his legs around one of the pipes and he waited. Once again he was the assassin, the predator, simply awaiting its game. This was his chance it had been eight months since anyone had come down to his cage and last time three out of the four guards hadn’t left alive. This time though he knew exactly what to do, he had planned his escape perfectly and perhaps he would finally get the chance to flee this hell.
“He’s down here,” Hawkling said nervously as he slouched down the dimly lit corridor, the few cheap electric lights flickered erratically, casting errant shapes to dance along the mouldy walls. “He’s the only prisoner down here since well, since the last time we tried to give him a routine physical exam, four out of the twelve guards died five more will never walk again. Since then we have kept him completely isolated he hasn’t left his cell for nearly eight months now.”
“Interesting,” Kiera replied, as a sly smile puckered her flawless skin.
“Please lead on commissioner, we have a very tight schedule to keep to and I am sure that you have many duties that you have to return to,” Claudius proclaimed, as he almost pushed Hawkling forward.
“Yes of course,” Hawkling replied as he set off, as fast as his fat legs would carry him, down the hallway.
The plan was already beginning to come together for him, it was clear now that, this group hadn’t come just to talk to this prisoner, there was something much more to it. Perhaps they intended to kill him, the result of one of his many misdeeds, or maybe they needed his services for some clandestine purpose. Whatever it was, there was certainly room here, for him to make his play. The smirk returned, creating more folds of fat along his chubby cheeks. Yes there was undoubtedly money to be made here, perhaps even more than he had first thought.
If this Royal Family the Snowfell’s, had a real interest in his prisoner, then they would certainly be willing to pay to make sure that whatever they required, took place smoothly.
“Yes indeed,” he murmured under his breathe, today was turning out to be a very good day indeed. Perhaps he would even make enough credits here, to buy one of Madame’s Victoria girls, so he could have a permanent companion, perhaps one of the whores with a drug problem, he would have no issue in obtaining any banned substances here and it would give him another level of control over the whore. She would worship him as a God, the one that took care of her needs and in return she would love him.
All he had to do now was make sure that nothing went wrong and soon he could be very wealthy indeed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
As Claudius followed the waddling commissioner, his neural implant, displayed the classified file again on this prisoner, this killer. It hadn’t been easy to get hold of, Empire intelligence and the death bringers themselves, were always very cautious about how they controlled the flow of information, when it related to the missions they conducted.
It had taken him six months, cost millions of credits and the lives of three of his most promising agents. Even after all that the file he had was not complete, several pertinent sections had been deleted.
Synapses burst to life and once again he is alone in his office in the royal court. A roaring fire spitting next to him, a large glass of Takena’s finest gut rot in his right hand and the data-sleeve just four pages long on the wooden desk before him. He had spent countless hours just staring at it, too terrified to look, his mind wracked with doubts. Had the information been worth everything he had to give up to get it, had it been worth the lives of three young agents, who had happily travelled off into the darkest corners of the universe alone, and who had never returned. This was the game that he was now playing, the game of war, where the reward for victory would be simply to survive and perhaps protect those that he loved. His father, rest his soul, had never truly understood this monumental contest, or perhaps he did and that was what had finally killed him.
The memory stirred and shifted. He was in the Baroness’s chambers, on the morning they were due to depart, she lay upon the bed nonchalantly, her pale, naked flesh covered in a simple silk robe, and her light brown hair splayed behind her against the pillow, so that it seemed like waves of soft butterscotch.
“This is too dangerous,” he had said bluntly, as he stared out through the viewing screen, at a field of long grass, as it swayed rhythmically in the wind.
“There is no other way, the war is upon us.” Her tone, as always easy and placid.
“I could send her away, make sure she is somewhere safe, somewhere away from all this, until it is all finished.”
“No!” her voice strong and regal. “She will not be safe anywhere else, who is it you would trust with her life, in this instance. Perhaps for once the Baron is right, she will be safer with you, as she always was.” Her voice trailed off.
He turned and stared at her, she appeared almost the same as she had done, thirty years ago when he had first caught sight of her, when she had been sent to the Baron, as part of a peace treaty with several other Core Worlds. She was to be married to the monster and even though she must have known, she had carried herself, with such grace and resolve. He thought now that he may well have fallen in love with her at that very instant.
He edged back over to the bed slowly, his exposed body, etched with scars and pot marks. “How is it?” he whispered as he knelt by the bed, “That you look more beautiful now than the first day I saw you?”
She favoured him with a soft smile, “I could lie,” she purred and leant over and kissed him on the cheek. “And tell you it is all natural, however you know, it is the gene and stem cell treatments, you could have them too you know,” she traced her fingers along the aflame, magenta tissue, the result of a life time of fighting this secret war. “They would get rid of these.”
He took her head tenderly in his giant paws, “That is not for me my love, you know me, I’m a simple man and such things are beyond me.” He kissed her deeply and tasted her afresh, “anyway I thought you liked these.” He motioned to his scarified flesh.
The Baroness’s eyes shifted to his, an exotic mix of icy- blue and emerald, which made him think of the water in the lake, where he had swum as a child. “I would never have you change anything.”
“Well I am glad,” As he stood up his knees popped and they sounded like shotguns. “I think I may soon need some of that treatment though, I am getting old.” He said as he slapped the slight paunch he now had, his muscles were still hard and firm, yet time was taking its toll.
The Baroness seemed to pour herself from the bed, and wrapped her slender arms around his waist. “You’re not old my love,” she purred, “Your just mature.”
“Ah well that makes it sound better at least.” They both chuckled.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” she sighed and lay her head against his broad shoulders.
He felt that familiar pang of longing, that desire to give up the burdens he had carried for so many years. Yet his will and fire were still strong, he had more to lose than he could ever have imagined. “You know I cannot my love,” he swung round and took the Baroness is his arms. “As much as I want to,” he kissed her forehead lightly, “You know more than anyone, what we both have to lose.”
She lay her head upon his chest, “I know, the storm is finally coming.”
“And if we cannot stop it, it will burn away everything that we love.”
The memory faded, yet the baroness’s scent excited his senses and his yearning returned. The neural implant flashed and once again the file was projected in fron
t of his eyes. The assassin’s full name was Andre Bernstein. He had been recruited first by Empire intelligence on some dead end mining planet, the name redacted, although it was noted he had been living rough and scavenging for food in the sewers.
He had been transferred to the death bringers who had taken him to Neptune, within the quarantined Sol system, where on its frozen surface, he had spent the next seven years undergoing the rigorous training to becoming a killer for the mighty Realm. It was noted that he had scored above the normal range in escape and evasion, hand-to-hand combat, and advanced weapons use. It was also noted in an above top secret section that he possessed some kind of dormant, psychic ability and high empathic levels.
When he had graduated from the academy, he was considered by most to be one of the finest intelligence agents that the death bringers possessed. It was clear that an internal struggle had broken out, between the death bringers and Empire intelligence, as to who would control the soul of this broken boy, and now trained killer. So a deal was made to share his talents, over the next ten years he had completed over two hundred assignments, mainly covert and deniable, wet-works (assassinations). From corrupt merchants, refusing to pay their tariffs to drug dealers even as far as planetary governors, and several low level barons.
The only note that was held within this section of his file was that he had refused to target women and children, this was considered a flaw in his personality profile, and on six occasion he was returned to Neptune for re-education, yet on each occasion this had failed to change his mind, and so the target profiles were allowed to remain.
After this final session of torture, he was given what would be his final official operation with the death bringers. It should have been simple enough; he was dropped onto Xt-456, a small agricultural colony, by a mark six, vector, stealth drop ship. Once on the ground he was to make his way to the main colonial hub. It had a standing population of only nine thousand and only twenty Empire law officers; more used to arresting drunken farm workers and breaking up bar brawls than looking out for assassins. So it was considered a soft target. When he had infiltrated the city, under the cover of the planets night, which lasted seventy-two standard hours, he was to make his way to the Church of the holy order, one of only a handful of religious organisation to exist outside of the puritans. Once there he was supposed to infiltrate and erase the first minister of the church, Antoine Lessoilles, a man who had become a thorn in the sides of the puritans, for preaching against them and the Realm itself.
It was at this point that Andre had deviated from his mission profile and both he and the first minister had vanished from the planet. Immediately Empire intelligence, disavowed Andre and put a kill order out on both of them. They had taken this away from the death bringers and dispatched two strike teams, each one consisting of six agency troopers, some of the best trained and armed soldiers in the division to track down, and bring back the now rogue agent.
Eventually after nearly six months and the offer of a reward of a million credits for information, they had tracked Andre to a small mining colony. The bodies of all twelve agents were found in the back of a disused warehouse. Over the next three years, Empire intelligence, brought all of its vast and limitless resources to bear on tracking this now rogue operative, they could not afford to have an outlawed agent on the loose. Over the space of those three years a further, thirty eight agents were slain.
The last entry in the file, had been heavily redacted although from what Claudius could make out, a young woman on the largest moon of a small transport hub at the very reaches of known space, had revealed Andre’s location, and had been paid nearly ten million credits, more money than the average citizen would see in a thousand lifetimes. During his capture, in the young woman’s apartment, a further five agents were killed and ten seriously injured before Andre was restrained. He was considered too valuable to simply murder, so he was to be detained in a facility, where they would be able to not only control him but also extract all the classified information he possessed.
As the file ended, Claudius stood for a moment lost within the well of his own thoughts, this man, this killer, who they had spent so much in order to find, could he really be the answer to stopping the storm, was that even possible. He pushed such ideas aside and reactivated his neural implant, he sought out the images from his own spy drones, the invisible, robotic cameras, which had saved his life more times than he could recall. He could see the hangar, where his own plain clothed agents were on guard and then he saw the image from just behind him where the honour guard were moving cautiously. He felt that familiar rumble within his gut and the hairs on the nap of his neck stood up.
Something wasn’t right, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, perhaps it was the way they were moving or the look in their eyes. After a lifetime spent evaluating threats, he had become used to reading people. He was suddenly cursing himself, how could he have been so stupid, how could he have let his guard down, he had trusted these men only because they were loyal, or supposedly loyal to the Baron. He should have only brought men and woman with him that he trusted, and that he had worked with before.
He gripped the hilt of his sword more aggressively, thoughts abounded and slowly his own strategy took shape. He used the neural implant to silently signal the troops he had brought with him, yet it would take them some time to reach this level, for now at least he was on his own, he glanced over at Kiera, so much like her Mother, graceful, resolute, beautiful, loving and kind, if hidden behind a hardened shell.
Once again he was back within the nursery, the assassin’s bloodied frame lay sprawled on the floor and he was crawling towards the crib. Blood shrouded most of his vision, yet he still dragged himself forward, driven by an all-consuming need to reach Kiera. When he had stretched up and taken hold of her tiny frame, she had not cried or squirmed as most children would, she was calm, and still. She had simply looked up at him, he thought that she had smiled, yet he didn’t know if that was simply something his own mind had added. So he had lain there upon the floor and held her, his daughter, his greatest secret.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hawkling was the first to reach the cell and already he could feel the sweat beading on his forehead, yet as he approached the laser grid, he could see that something was wrong.
“What the hell’s going on here commissioner?” Claudius shouted as he leaned forward towards the empty cell.
Hawkling’s mind was spinning, it wasn’t possible that someone had reached the cell before them, he had this wing sealed off, and it was impossible for the prisoner to have escaped. In all the years since the facility was first opened, there had not been one single escape attempt.
His thoughts raced, as he tried to find the right words, “I don’t know, he was here earlier, the last check had him present within his cell and there’s no way that he could have escaped the confines of this room.” His words were hurried and he was barely able to keep his emotions in check, as he saw his bright, sumptuous future evaporate in front of his very eyes.
Kiera edged forward to stand in front of the grid, he was going to warm her about the bars of super-heated light, yet the words caught in his throat. It was at that moment that a figure swung down from the gloom, so now his powerful upper body that was criss-crossed with jagged scars was visible. His eye’s like those of some sort of predacious beast, always watching, always aware, constantly searching for its target. Then the smile came and you could see this was not a beast, but a man, most would even say handsome, his dark hair close cropped.
When he spoke, his voice was deep and commanding, “Long time no see fat man.” He paused and those eyes, found the lady Snowfell, and his beam widened. “And look you have brought guests, I’m not so sure about the old man.” He shifted his gaze to Claudius, “However I can recognise another killer when I see one.” He nodded politely and then turned his attention back to Kiera, “But I must admit, my lady, you are a rare, beauty, although, for a man incarcerated in such
a place, the sight of any woman is welcome.”
Before she could reply, Hawkling stepped in, he had to keep control of this situation, make sure all sides knew that he was still the man in command. “Prisoner eleven, seventy-eight, you have visitors so behave, they have come a long way to see you.”
“I thought we were passed all of this prisoner rubbish, Hawkling, we are old friends now and I see you’re not even walking with a limp anymore, so that leg must have healed up nicely.” Andre smirked.
Hawkling felt a stab of pain in his leg and the image of the jagged bone protruding from torn skin flashed in front of his eyes, he shuddered and fought to keep himself under control, he fixed his mind firmly on the credits, and the fun he would have with it. “Prisoner, step down and behave yourself,” although he tried to sound domineering, it actually came out as more of a question.
Andre’s face shifted and the killer was once again apparent, he flipped acrobatically from the roof and landed almost majestically on the floor of the cell, “Commissioner,” he sneered. “You know me very well I do not play well with others.”
The old warrior strode forward, “Mister Bertsein, I have a proposition for you.”
The Last Foxhole (The Forgotten War Saga Book 1) Page 18
