by Nick Cole
There was no one there.
“I’ve been waiting.”
For whom?
And that was the answer he didn’t know.
But the question was true. That he did know.
18
Dawn was just a few hours away. Rechs had walked the forest all night, trying to remember something he knew was important. Something that had surfaced in the dark waters of his mind.
Toward the middle of the night, deep in the strange forest smelling of the heavy scent of cut wood and pine, he searched his mind and tried to think of what his earliest memory, or thought even, was.
“The first thing you remember?” he asked of himself. It sounded like an order.
Everything in his mind was a jumble of ancient starships and leaders no one remembered, or cared about, anymore. How many emergency klaxons had he heard, and felt within his bones? How many fresh new hells had threatened them at each turn as they crawled farther and farther out into the Big Dark?
How many bullets had he heard buzzing past his helmet?
And blaster shots too, for that matter.
How many?
And on how many strange planets had that all once seemed so alien and strange?
He walked the quiet forest path not really seeing the things in the dark that his gunslinger’s eyes could detect. Instead he saw a million jump cuts from a thousand dramatic moments that made up his life. He felt the end nearing, the final scene coming at him. Like some ancient movie projector winding out toward that last white strip of bright light. Closing time.
How much is too much for any one man?
And yet one phrase kept repeating itself every so often, surfacing like some ancient leviathan in the deep dark waters of a forgotten sea.
Hang out on the edge. Wait.
In the silence of this place, way out on the trails beneath strange trees, he heard that. Like some buried code in his hard drive. Like a mantra, or an order, that had been guiding his life all along, and he’d never known it. Even before the Legion—and hadn’t the Legion been a convenient way to watch the edges? Hadn’t it?
He’d heard it.
What was it? What did it mean?
When the Legion hadn’t been enough, he’d just gone rogue and patrolled the waters alone, like some shark lurking beyond the safe harbors out in the dark waters, waiting for prey it knew would show up one day.
He tried the name of the man the girl wanted him to kill.
“Goth… Sullus.”
There wasn’t anything in it that sparked some sudden flash of revelation.
And yet, way down deep, there was an unexplained feeling to the name. Some streetlights-coming-on-and-you-were-expected-home feeling that was so ancient, yet so familiar. As if, had the name been different… all would’ve been revealed.
He’d felt that way many times about many things.
About planets from which one could barely see the stars of the core. About lonely star ports that hadn’t seen another ship in twenty years. About the wind moving through the rusting metal of those long-dead starships beached on the sands like dead monsters from another age.
Those thoughts were like some unquiet and accepted ghost passing through the rooms of his mind.
“There should be… more.”
He waited on the walkway that overlooked the strange garden outside Prisma’s cell.
In time the strange birds awoke, giving their first tentative morning calls one to another. High above, the distant star began to cast itself across the frozen surface overhead. Soon a wan, almost fog-shrouded light filtered down, awakening the garden and all its wonderful smells.
Life, thought Rechs. Life is so much more than looking down the end of a blaster rifle.
He’d wasted it all.
And not…
Hang out on the edge. Wait.
That was important. And somehow the little girl who wanted revenge was the key to a tune he could barely remember. Or a lock that needed to be found before it could be opened.
***
It started with a question when the little girl came out from her monk’s cell within the inner sanctum. Tyrus Rechs was waiting for her. Quietly sitting on a small stone bench nearby.
She stared at him with hard, angry eyes, knowing he was going to leave her behind. She was tired and sleepy, but the anger was there… and it always would be.
“Do you know what you think about when you kill a man?” Tyrus asked as she sat down next to him on the bench.
She merely stared at him, then wiped sleep from her eyes. One fluid movement. Fast. Gunfighter fast, noted Rechs. Her movements were unexpected and sure.
But still she didn’t answer him.
“You think about the next man you have to kill. Sometimes within the next second. Sometimes for the years you wait for him to finally come for you. That’s what you think about. You think about the next man you have to kill.”
She tilted her head and seemed to consider this. But nothing more. The distant chanting of the monks had begun for the morning.
“Once you start killing,” continued Rechs, “it never stops.”
She turned her head now and watched him. Challenged him.
“In that moment when your target goes down… all the triumph you thought you were going to feel, all that you’d imagined you were going to feel… you don’t feel any of that.”
“No?” she asked, her voice soft and scratchy.
“No,” replied Tyrus matter-of-factly. He stretched one leg out in front of the other. Along the length of that leg, hidden beneath the tactical pants, were a dozen scars. Tyrus couldn’t remember how he’d acquired them all. He just knew they were there. And at times, like now, he felt them even though he could not see them. “No,” he said as an afterthought. And then, “You don’t.”
Silence.
“Because it doesn’t bring them back?” she tried. And then added, “The ones you kill for.”
It was an honest question delivered in a little girl’s voice, but to Rechs it contained all the truth that could be known even if one spent lifetimes searching the galaxy. And so he just nodded in reply.
“I want to leave you here,” he said. When she didn’t protest, or even shake her head, he continued. “I want you to grow up here, where it’s safe. These people will take care of you. And what happened to you on Wayste… it will never happen again, Prisma.”
Still she watched him.
“Killing this man… you’ll never be safe again. And you won’t stop. You’ll find a dozen other reasons to go on killing and settling up scores until the reasons why are all just imaginations in your head. Do you know why you’ll do that? Why you’ll become that way?”
She shook her head slowly. Barely.
“Because that’s how you become a bounty hunter. It’s not that you like the killing work. That’s just to begin with. It’s that, in the end, you don’t mind it. That’s where vengeance leads. It leads to your own death even though you don’t realize it. You’re dead inside, except you’re still walking around.”
Some bird hopped down onto the sandstone floor of the subterranean monastery. It hopped forward once, twice, three times, then leapt away and back into the high vaults of the quiet place, telling all its friends what a brave warrior it was, as it chirped and squawked. Or maybe it just babbled like an idiot.
Birds just don’t care, do they?
Rechs turned back to the little girl. “As a bounty hunter you do what other people need doing and you don’t mind it so much. In the end there’s nothing left of who you once were. Trust me, Prisma. Stay here and grow up… and fall in love and live… and be a little girl while you can. Please. Don’t become like me.”
She listened to him and considered his words. And like all little girls who must have their way, she consulted the compass she called her heart and once more shook her head. Barely. She began to mouth a word, and it would always be “no” in all the languages that communicated information from one life to another ac
ross the span of the galaxy. It didn’t matter what she said, the bounty hunter saw it, and it would be “no” to all that was good. Life. Love. The pursuit of happiness. She would have revenge, and it would consume her.
He made a face. A small quick face that grieved for all that might’ve been.
And at that moment Tyrus Rechs had the most profound thought of his very long life.
We start out knowing all the answers, and in the end we realize how little we know. Just the important things. And by that time… no one listens anymore.
Hang out on the edge. Wait.
“I will hunt this Goth Sullus for you, Prisma.”
He watched her eyes. Eyes like a cat that would not change. Only waiting. Watching. Considering. Weighing.
“And I’ll take you with me, girl. You’ll see.”
Her eyes searched his face cautiously.
“I’ll teach you what I can. And everything I’ve warned you about will happen to you. Whoever you were, whoever you might have become… it dies if you leave with me. So you should stay.”
She gave nothing away. No joy. No hope. No resignation or even second thoughts. Nothing.
“Do you understand that?”
She nodded.
“You will do everything I tell you, girl.”
She nodded.
“If I tell you to run, you run.”
She nodded.
“If I tell you to shoot, you shoot.”
She nodded again.
For a long moment he held her eyes, watching for any falseness. Any weakness. He found nothing. He’d looked into the cold eyes of predators from one side of the galaxy to the other and seen the same thing he saw in this little girl’s eyes before him. He knew a killer when he saw one. She’d already killed this Goth Sullus, whoever he was, a thousand times over in her heart. Or what was left of it. Looking into this little girl’s eyes, he found another killer. Just like him.
“Now you pay me. For the job, Prisma.”
She looked at him. Her eyes conveyed her lack of money. Then she remembered something.
“My… He left a lot of credits in a kind of bank and told me how to get them. They’re there.”
“No, Prisma. Pay me with your most precious possession.”
She thought about this. Then she got up and went back into her cell. She came out holding something. She stared down at it… then she held it out for him to take.
It was a picture of a woman, and a baby.
Rechs studied it.
“This?” he whispered.
“I never knew her. This is all I have.”
The woman in the picture had Prisma’s eyes. Maybe someday the little girl in front of him would grow up to be as beautiful as this woman was. No doubt the baby was Prisma.
Rechs placed the picture in his shirt pocket.
“Payment accepted.”
He watched her watch the place where the picture had gone. He would give it back to her when the deed was done.
It wasn’t the anger. It was the absence of life he found inside those eyes. It was the cold deep already growing inside of her. Like some yawning and bottomless chasm on some lost and lonely dead planet that had been flung from the orbit of a loving star long ago. Now it just wandered the Big Dark, a danger to everyone.
***
The wobanki was prancing to and fro across the landing platform underneath the Obsidian Crow, dumping vent ports and unhooking the materials hoses from the local access. Monks assisted as best they could, but this was not the most advanced of star ports. It was little more than a landing platform with some basic services.
The ice and wind howled all around the ship, and the running and platform lights threw great starbursts of illumination across the scene. Rechs was wearing a heavy coat and hood. The fur trimming whipped and tossed in the face of the storm. It would be a rough departure for sure. But that was to be expected. Far below, he could see the hidden paradise of the gardens and monastery deep beneath the ice.
“Ready for departure?” he shouted at the frantic wobanki.
The wobanki yowled in the affirmative.
Across the landing pad, Prisma dragged his clamshell weapons case to the boarding ramp. The large war bot scuttled after, indicating he should be doing that for his mistress. But the girl refused to let anyone help her with the first task her sensei had given her.
Rechs shook his head. Even he knew this was a new low for him. Turning a child into a killer. You’re not really going to do that? the voice inside his head asked.
Or was she some kind of bait?
Or a touchstone to that phrase that kept floating just out of reach in front of his mind’s eye?
“Hang out on the edge. Wait.”
What had started as a distant whisper was becoming clearer with each passing moment. As though the plot in some entertainment was coming into focus.
What does it mean? he asked himself.
The voice chose not to reply, and the storm suddenly howled and threw sleet across the platform.
“Start the master de-icers,” he shouted at the catman.
“You’re taking her?” asked Mother Ree from behind him.
Rechs turned. She was wrapped in a deep white heavy robe. The wind pulled at her clothing, but her ancient features were set in stone and unmoving.
He nodded.
She moved closer. “There’s no magic in this galaxy. No strange force that gives people powers, Tyrus. I can’t read minds or move objects, but I can tell… I knew you those six months we fled nonstop from Republican patrols on every planet this side of the Falda Nebulae. You’re taking her after him.”
Her voice was a hard spike driven into him like an accusation.
When he didn’t respond, she continued. “She’s just a little girl, Tyrus. Are you so far gone you can’t see that?”
She was right. There was no defense. Just some puzzle slowly falling into place deep inside a man who’d lived far too long.
“At best you’ll get her killed quickly,” Mother Ree said. “At worst… she’ll become like you. An empty shell. A puppet whose strings are pulled by revenge until even the revenge is just a ghost. But you can stop, Tyrus. You, and she, can stay here and live.”
That would’ve hurt if it weren’t true. The part about being a puppet. But it was true… and it went deep to a place he’d never bothered to understand. Maybe because it was such a mess. Maybe because it was buried under a thousand years of messes.
“Yes,” Mother Ree continued. “I loved you, Tyrus. Loved you madly when you rescued me like some princess in a fairy tale. Those six months were the best of my life. Being rescued and running for our lives… But I knew all that was never really about me.”
She stopped. And what she said next was neither hard nor bitter. It was merely pitying. And somehow that was worse than all the other things it could’ve been.
“It was about you, General Rex. It was about you heading toward some conclusion that began long ago. Something you can’t even remember now. No, there may be no magic powers in this galaxy that let people see into other people’s minds, or sense things, but I know this is true—I can see it on your face. This is about something you began long ago, and you think she’s somehow part of it. Princesses in need of rescue are just a convenient excuse for you to… to…”
He looked off. The storm was getting worse. Time for departure. But really, he had no defense against her. She was right about everything.
“And that’s not the worst part. Not knowing exactly what it is you’re looking for. No, the worst part of it is, it’s not even about… her. Is it?”
You were going to say “me,” he thought. “It’s not even about me, Mara.” That’s what you were going to say.
Long ago, he’d had an idea how much pain he’d caused her when he left her here in the care of people who would protect someone the Republic probably still wanted dead today. But now, looking in her eyes as she pled with him… now he really knew. And it was much, much worse
than he’d ever imagined.
He shook his head. He hadn’t meant to. His involuntary response to all her accusations had just busted through his rigid discipline and controls.
“You’re heading toward some kind of ending, aren’t you?” She had to raise her voice to be heard above the howling storm. “And she’s part of it?”
“I don’t…” His voice was dry and cracked. He swallowed and licked his lips. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “But there’s something I’ve… something I’ve been waiting for. And… and she’s part of it. I need to take her with me to find it.”
Mother Ree shook her head in disgust. Except it wasn’t disgust. It was that other worst thing. It was pity.
“You’re using her, Tyrus. Just like you used me, used the excuse of rescuing me, to abandon the Republic and go off on your own. To reach the edge and—”
“Yes!”
He shouted the word, and the admission instantly stung her. As though he’d said something so terrible it couldn’t possibly be true because it was so selfish and craven. Except it was true. And that had stunned her worse than she had ever imagined it would.
“Where?” was all she could mumble in reply. Even though what she wanted to ask was… Why?
“Telos.”
“What’s there?”
“The men who were with this Goth Sullus worked for the Brotherhood. At least, that’s the way she described them. I know their markings. Part of a bounty hunter clan. On Telos there was a big battle long ago. They maintain a base deep inside the wreckage of an old ship. We’ll try to pick up their trail there.”
She interrupted him. Not caring about trails and cabals. “But why take a little girl on a quest to kill some man you’ve never met? You’re not really a bounty hunter, even though you’re the most feared one in the galaxy. You’re the devil no one talks about because you’re some kind of bad luck charm for nightmares. But you were never a killer for the sake of a job. You’ve gone from a knight in shining armor to some cursed memory of that chevalier on a quest it can’t remember. Why her, Tyrus? You don’t even know what you’re looking for. I knew that back then… and it’s still sadly true now.”
