by Nick Cole
“Prisma. You are…” His voice broke and caught in his throat. “Prisma, you are strong enough to do this. Everything will be okay in just a little while. I promise. But don’t come back here until they leave.”
Then…
“Do you understand?” he shouted.
She tried to say something, but her mouth wouldn’t work. Her lips were trembling uncontrollably.
She heard boots now. Heavy boots on the old laser-cut sandstones of the streets of a place no one in the core worlds cared much about. A place no one was ever supposed to find. That’s what her daddy had told her many times, though she hadn’t really understood what he was saying then. She’d thought they were just hiding from his career with the Republic and his endless work.
Now she knew they were hiding from these men.
She ducked behind some old shipping modules.
“Prisma…” She heard her father’s tiny voice over the communicator as she moved for cover.
“I understand, Daddy,” she whispered. “They’re coming.”
“I love you,” he said again. And just before he cut the link he whispered, “Always.”
And then he was gone.
The boots of the men, many of them, came on against the laser-cut sandstone, making a dull hollow thump that was like the marching band music for some terrible piece of music no one ever wanted to hear.
Prisma peeked around the corner of a module.
Long tattoos, like the edges of severe blades, curled about the men’s massive arms and bulging biceps. Their blaster armor was a patchwork assembly of a reflective black leather variant. Even Prisma knew that criminals preferred this kind of armor. It let them pull their “jobs” more easily. Especially the ones that required stealth.
They looked, to Prisma, like zombies. Dark circles under their eyes. Knotted, long, dirty hair. Pale skin and those tattoos like big curling hydra-pythons.
But there was another one among them. A man in a dark hooded robe. He moved at their center, seemingly oblivious to their scanning movements and military hand signals. His arms were tucked within long sleeves and held in an almost reverent position. His bowed head was hidden beneath his cloak.
Prisma felt a wave of intense cold run through her. As though her skin, all the way down to her bones, had suddenly turned to ice water. They were headed for the governor’s residence.
They were headed for her daddy.
When they reached the end of the street, Prisma pushed off from behind the cargo modules and followed them quietly, at a distance.
***
All Prisma could ever really say for a long time about what happened—all she saw in her mind—was a very specific moment, and that was when the massive security door had just come off its hinges. She’d been creeping closer to the pirates, or whatever they were, that had surrounded the governor’s residence.
They stood before the angular squat desert building in a rough semicircle, blaster rifles ready. The man in the dark hooded robe was behind them and off to the side, as though he weren’t really with them. As though he were very far away from all that was about to happen. He was a ghost that hovered nearby. A ghost which everyone saw, even though they didn’t want to.
Prisma had passed the people of Bacci Cantara on the way to the residence. People she would never know because they were dead in the street.
“Really, miss,” rumbled KRS-88. “This is absolutely the opposite of what your father has instructed you to do. I shall be forced to tell him of your rebellious behavior when once we meet him again. I regret this deeply. Perhaps at this evening’s meal, before dessert.”
“Crash,” hissed Prisma. “Shhhhhhh. You’re going to get us killed.”
“Oh… yes. You are quite right, miss. I’m not very good at this sort of war thing. I’m just a service bot. Pomp and circumstance at your service. Again, young miss… this seems an excellent way to get killed, and or disabled. Please, come away from all this… this… excitement. It’s unseemly.”
Prisma ignored the bot’s warnings and crept forward. Toward the gang of pirates. Then closer still. She could hear one of them, a gravel-voiced man, yelling at her father.
“Come out and face Goth Sullus, you Republican scum! Things can go easy—or they can go real hard!”
A moment later—a moment after the giant of a man lowered his blaster and turned back to the man in the dark hooded robes—the massive security door just came away from the building. As though the pirates had used some sort of hydraulic jaw, or some trick only they knew to violate such barriers.
Prisma would always remember that. The loud shriek of rending metal. The pirates scrambling to get out of the way of the flying-outward door.
A security door meters thick.
State-of-the-art Republican defensive perimeter security hardware.
When the dry dust of Bacci Cantara cleared, the door lay on the courtyard in front of the governor’s residence.
“I’m coming out!” she heard her father say. His voice sounded small and distant and pathetic.
Where are the two hulks? Prisma screamed inside her head. They should be defending us. Later she would find out that they had been destroyed. Shot to pieces. They’d been blasted into melted ruin on a side street where they’d tried to set up an ambush on the pirates.
“I’m coming out with it,” her father said.
What was “it”? That was something Prisma would wonder later. Later, when she sat in the ruins of the home she’d almost had. Or on the ship she took to get off the planet and find a bounty hunter who would kill for her.
The pirates were moving forward, weapons aimed. The man in the hooded cloak still faced outward toward the dry desert world that seemed only to be filled with silence. An afternoon wind whipped and caught at his robes, making him seem like some mythic wraith that troubled the legends and bedtime stories of a thousand worlds.
The whining report of a lone blaster shot rang out—and Prisma’s life changed forever.
As though her soul were suddenly frozen in that terrible high-pitched whine of a blaster report moment.
Then the gravel-voiced giant exclaimed, “Got it!”
Now Prisma could see the big man approach the hooded figure almost fearfully. Not reverently, Prisma would later remember. The man was in fear of his fear. He held out her father’s credentials data globe. The man in the hooded cloak took it, palmed it, examined it as though he were some second-rate star carnie gypsy about to read a fortune. Then it disappeared within the folds of his wind-flapped garment.
He nodded once.
“Let’s get out of here, brothers,” shouted the giant pirate. “Tactical movement. Watch the corners and alleys. We’re not off this dust bowl yet, leejes.”
And in time they were gone.
Prisma waited.
The entire town was silent now. Only the sound of the moaning wind, rising and falling, moving and keening through the old buildings, remained. As though it were the only thing left to mourn all the dead.
Slowly Prisma crept forward from her hiding place. She would remember running. Oversized boots pounding against the hot afternoon sandstone pavement of the courtyard and the now dead place called Bacci Cantara. She saw her father lying on the ground. The blaster hole in his chest. His beautiful gray eyes staring skyward. Not seeing her at all now.
“Get up, Daddy,” she said. Her voice small and desperate. She shook her head once, back and forth, and began to cry. She begged him to get up.
His hands lay at his sides. The fingers open to the sky. As though he had finally surrendered all that one can grasp and hold in this life to something inevitably greater than himself.
Heaving with sobs, she dropped to the ground and took one of the hands. She tried furiously to rub life into it.
“Please… Daddy, please…” She could barely understand herself through her own tears. But she understood enough to know that she hated the sound she was making. And to hear herself begging was to hate it all the mor
e.
“Please, Daddy… I can’t be alone now. Not yet.”
Far below, out on the vast dry lake bed, the big ship’s engines ignited and grew to an ear-splitting roar.
Please.
She must’ve said that a hundred times by the time the ship rose into the sky, turned its back on Bacci Cantara forever, and surged off toward the stars and all the other mischief it must make before this tale is over.
A wan wind and a scattering of grit washed over her, and still she cried, helpless now, letting his cold hand fall back onto the dirt of that place.
Tears left dusty tracks on her face. Her shoulders shook, and her chest heaved in violent spasms.
Please.
Please.
Please come back.
And…
Why?
Night fell. Prisma sat next to her father. He was just a body now.
Gone.
Taken.
By whom, asked some voice deep within.
She watched her father’s eyes stare up at the few stars coming out along the galaxy’s edge.
By whom?
“Please,” she whispered, her voice raw and scratched. Her eyes dead and far away. “Please come back now.”
By whom?
Her tiny mouth formed the first word, making no sound. Then the second. Who had killed her daddy?
Who?
Someone named…
“Goth Sullus.”
16
Tyrus Rechs listened to the young girl’s tale of woe. He has listened to many such tales of tragedy and loss before someone has asked him to kill for them. Sitting there amid the ticking and humming that is almost nonexistent and yet somehow constant in an interstellar starship, he is lulled into a kind of meditative trance.
Though he has never been to Wayste, he knows that world. He has known all the worlds that were ever like Wayste. In the end, to him, they are all the same.
And though he has never met the girl’s father, he knows him also. Knows the type. A bureaucrat who got caught up in something he didn’t have the credits, influence, or brass to buy his way out of. All bills come due eventually. The kid’s story seems like nothing more than a bill that was finally required to be paid. The tragedy on the other side is someone else’s business.
Oftentimes Rechs’s business.
He listened to the last of the story. How the light freighter Viridian Cyclops came in to do trade out at the old desert star port. How this little girl was the only survivor of the massacre at Bacci Cantara. How she traded everything she had to the pilot in order to be taken to the nearest sector capital. Ackabar. So she could find a killer.
So she could obtain justice.
“Will you kill him for me?” she asked him innocently at the end of her story. As though she’d just asked a parent—someone who’d raised her, loved her, taken care of her; anyone other than the armored stranger in front of her—to take care of some spider that had frightened her.
She repeated the question.
He was tired. Getting more tired all the time. And this story bothered him like most never had. Probably because she was just a little girl. Somewhere ahead was the end of the galaxy for him. Even he, Tyrus Rechs, who’d lived a very long life, knew that all things must come to an end for everyone. All bills must be paid. All debts reconciled on the ledger of the galaxy.
“Will you?” she asked for a third time in her tiny soprano voice. It seemed to be the only thing in the near darkness of the hurtling ship.
There had been no crying while she’d told the story. Just silent tears filling up her large, dark, unblinking eyes.
Rechs suspected there had been enough of crying—when no one was looking. The galaxy constantly demanded that you get yourself together and lock it down in order to move on. And she’d had to learn that before most. You had to lock it down because that was the price of admission and the only way one could survive day after day in a soulless galaxy that was quickly becoming an out-of-control dumpster fire.
Dumpster fire.
Those were old words, he thought to himself in the silence between him and the little girl, with the big war bot looking on. In the darkness and dim lighting he liked to keep as a constant blanket inside the Crow.
A place outside the galaxy in which to hide.
He stood up, feeling his muscles begin to stiffen and even ache. He’d take a shot of Androx. It wouldn’t do much, but it was something. Something to keep surviving.
“Just keep… moving forward,” he thought he said to himself. Instead he’d said it aloud.
“What?” asked the little girl.
Prisma Maydoon, she’d announced herself as. Maydoon was an old name Rechs barely remembered. He’d heard it once. Long ago. Some admiral, or something. Back in the early days of the Repub.
“Nothing,” he muttered as he turned to go.
“So will you? Will you kill… Goth Sullus?”
He didn’t say what he wanted to say. Didn’t even shake his head just slightly like he felt he should’ve. To indicate something. To pass some kind of judgment for her to understand.
You’re too far gone for all that, he reminded himself. Just tell her yes… or no. And keep moving on.
“I can pay,” she whispered.
There was that too.
There was always that.
“No,” he mumbled as he walked off. Into the darkness of the other places within the speeding ship.
“Why?” she asked plaintively.
But he didn’t answer. He was gone, and all that seemed to remain within the silence of the ship was her question. Echoing off the bulkheads of his mind. Asking him to kill… and other things.
***
Later, via comm, the wobanki woke him in his bunk with a status update in its babble-speak nonsense.
“Lock in a course for En Shakar,” he replied. “Then execute the next jump.” He cut the link and watched the status display above his bunk.
The dull, almost nonexistent hum of hyperspace was gone. He hadn’t even noticed the Crow falling out of the jump into Tarravil. He’d been too tired.
On the display panel he watched as the ship confirmed course change and spooled up for a new jump. He closed his tired eyes and rubbed them. He hadn’t even gotten out of his armor. He really should, he thought, as he swiped a bottle of pills from the shelf next to his head. He stared at them, then shook a few into his mouth.
They hit, and he closed his eyes. A moment later the ship lurched into hyperspace, but he was already gone. En Shakar was a long jump out into the big dark nowhere along the edge.
***
Captain Keel ducked his head to avoid a piece of overhead conduit as he made his way deep into the mechanical aft of the Six. As soon as Wraith had shared the tidbit about the war bot, Garret had set to work reverse-engineering a tracker. He’d finished it within an hour. Now the crew was on its way to Ackabar.
A violet glow lit up the confined space ahead. While they were jumping from Corsica, Leenah had said the ship’s timing pulsars seemed out of sync. Keel had hardly seen her since, with the exception of a few visits to the galley for meals and the occasional passing in the cozy passages. They were nearly to Ackabar, and Keel felt the need to check in on her. He was growing accustomed to having a larger crew. And Leenah certainly was useful.
“How’s it going?” he asked, looking down at the princess, who was straining to tighten a bolt.
The pink-skinned alien looked up and wiped her brow, leaving a dark smear of dust and grease across her forehead and along her hair-like tendrils. She smiled. “I think I just about have the sub-light timing synced properly. It was off by almost one thousandth of a second. When was the last time you had it serviced?”
Keel couldn’t remember. “It may have been a while. Probably the last time I was in the core. Usually Ravi—”
Leenah cut him off. “I didn’t think you were the type to let a thing like that go. Flyboy like you?”
“Like me?” Keel echoed
with a smile. “What is it you think you know about me?” He sat down and let his legs dangle into the service pit where the princess worked.
“You flyboys always obsess about your rides. It’s often the only thing your type thinks about.”
Keel turned down his face thoughtfully. “I was more of a ground-based operative to start with. It just turns out I took to flying naturally once I gave it a try.”
“Well,” Leenah said, pulling off her heavy gloves, “it’s still well within the range of what’s considered acceptable for high-performing starships. It’s just not…”
“Perfect?” suggested Keel.
“Ideal,” Leenah answered. She vaulted herself out of the maintenance hatch and took a seat next to Keel. “And in your line of work…” She left her sentence incomplete.
They sat together quietly for a while. Staring at the violet thrums that flashed on cue with the timing pulsars. They seemed to light up the darkened section of machinery like fireworks on Republic Day.
“So…” Keel said, “you still set on rejoining the MCR? There’s a lot more money if you stick around.”
And there it was. He was asking the princess to stay. Expanding operations. Taking on the aid of others, though he’d started his career swearing off the very thought. It was Ravi’s fault, really. Keel had been a fine loner until meeting him.
Leenah gathered a fingertip of dust from the hull floor and held it up for inspection. “Looks like it’s been a while since you did a vacuum purge.”
Keel nodded. That, too, was on his list of things that needed doing. But cleaning out the ship and cycling it through several shipwide airlock ventings took time, and that time never seemed to come. Maybe after this job was finished.
“Listen,” Leenah said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About the MCR. How it started and what they… did. I admit it’s not as noble and romantic an organization as I first thought back on my home planet. But they’ve changed. Really. One of the first things they tell you when you join is that the MCR of Kublar and the like isn’t the MCR of today.”
Keel shrugged. “Sounds like what the Republic says every time the galaxy finds out about some clandestine revenue seizure. Always sorry until the next time.”
