Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  Briar shook his head and his jowls trembled. His collar was almost buried in the folds of neck fat. “You’ve gone mad then, haven’t ye?” Those eyes widened in mock surprise. “He’s gone mad.”

  Hoodwink nodded toward Briar’s throat. “You really ought to get that resized sometime.”

  “What,” Briar said. “The bronze bitch?”

  “No. Your neck.” Normally he wouldn’t insult Briar like that, but he just wanted him to go.

  The simple-looking jailer came up. He wore black pants and a black vest over a white shirt. The middle of the shirt was stamped with the blood palm of his profession. He looked like a real person, as most gols did. Sometimes when you talked to gols you could almost believe they were real, if you kept things light, superficial. But engage in any deeper conversation and you routed them out. Gols, the mindless working class of the city-state.

  The jailer nodded at Briar. “Visiting hours are up, krub.” He wiped drool from his mouth with one sleeve. You would have never seen a gol doing something like that five years ago. The gols had really degenerated in the past few months.

  “I heard you, gol,” Briar said. “Jobe is it?”

  The gol nodded. “My name is Jobe. Now get you to the surface, krub.”

  Briar smiled ironically, and glanced at Hoodwink. “Until later, then. Hopefully a few more hours in the asshole of the world will blast some sense into you.”

  Briar retrieved his fleece from the coat rack outside the cell, and ambled away down the torchlit tunnel. Hoodwink was suddenly aware of other eyes watching from the dark of nearby cells. Briar seemed oblivious, concerned only with moving his bulk up the tunnel. The man paused beside the display case that held the sword, and he shook his head, muttering something.

  “Briar,” Hoodwink said.

  The man looked back.

  Hoodwink almost didn’t ask. He didn’t want the other prisoners to hear. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he said, “Say sorry to Cora for me.”

  Briar frowned and he turned away. In moments he was a featureless silhouette among the shadows.

  Hoodwink felt the jailer’s eyes on him.

  “What are you looking at gol?” He pulled the neck of his jail-issue orange robe tight, covering his upper chest, which was blistered and red from the events of this morning.

  Jobe didn’t blink. “I am on guard duty, krub.”

  Hoodwink scrunched up his face. “Don’t you have something better to do than stare at me all day?”

  “I am on guard duty, krub.” Spoken exactly the same way. Jobe unexpectedly clouted the bars with his baton.

  Hoodwink leaped back.

  Jobe broke into a stupid grin.

  Hoodwink shook his head, and limped over to the cell’s only mat. “Damn gols.”

  Not only was Hoodwink’s chest badly burned, but he’d hurt his ankle something nasty this morning during the capture. He’d given the Gate guards quite the chase, that’s for sure. If he hadn’t stopped to roll in the snow and douse the flames on his person he might’ve made it.

  Lying on the mat, he lifted one hand to his face. The guttering torches whipped shadows across his knuckles. He made a fist. He could almost feel the electricity within, the power that was shielded away by the collar at his neck, the bronze bitch.

  The gols had bitched him when he was fifteen, just when he’d started to develop his powers, like all the other humans who came of age. Bitched for twenty years. He had tried so many different things to get that collar off over the years, but nothing had worked.

  Maybe he just hadn’t tried hard enough.

  “Your trial is tonight?” Jobe pressed. “Ahead of the murderers? Rapists? What did you do?”

  Hoodwink ignored the gol, who was still staring at him.

  Jobe wiped a batch of slobber from his lips. “Tonight your head goes bounce-bounce.”

  Hoodwink blinked, and a smile flitted across his face.

  They’d have to break through the collar to make his head go fucking bounce-bounce.

  CHAPTER 2

  Hoodwink sat behind a desk at the front of the courthouse with his back to the stands. He was shivering from the cold and his own nervousness. The shackles around his hands rattled quietly. A subtle mist emerged from his nostrils with every exhale.

  One word repeated again and again in his mind.

  Lightning lightning lightning.

  LIGHTNING.

  Behind him, the courthouse was packed. He’d been stunned by the sheer number of people who’d turned out to watch his public trial and execution, people who’d come here despite the snowstorm that was brewing outside. He didn’t think he was that important. And he wasn’t. The fact was, he hadn’t been to an execution in a long time, and he’d simply forgotten what a draw the bloodsport could be. It seemed somehow fitting that the last execution he’d attend would be his own.

  He wondered how many friends of his were in the crowd, seeing him disgraced like this. Probably not many. The notice had been too short. Arrested in the morning, tried and executed in the evening. That was gol “efficiency” for you. Only the locals who’d heard the crier’s announcement would be present. No, he had no friends here.

  As for Briar, the fat merchant had returned a few hours ago, but Hoodwink had given him the same answer—Hoodwink would take the fall for this, no matter what. Briar reluctantly gave in, with a promise to attend the execution. However Hoodwink hadn’t seen the man among the multitudes tonight. It was for the best, probably.

  “This court has heard the witnesses.” The judge wore an ermineskin cloak over a black gown stamped in the chest with the gavel of his profession. The long white curls of a wig spilled over his forehead and down his back. He was one of the most lucid gols Hoodwink had witnessed in months. “The evidence is overwhelming. You have been placed by multiple observers at the scene, and caught committing the most horrendous act of terrorism this city has known in years. What do you have to say to all of this, krub Hoodwink Cooper?”

  That I’m glad, he thought. So damn glad none of them saw her.

  Instead: “I’m guilty.”

  Murmurs rippled through the crowd.

  The judge eyed him critically. “So you admit that you attacked the Forever Gate?”

  “I thoroughly admit this, your honor.”

  “That you defied our most ancient and sacred law?” It was forbidden to lay so much as a hand on the Gate.

  “Defied? Defiled might be a better word. Raped in the arse.” Hoodwink shot the audience the biggest shit-eating grin he could manage. One old woman gasped.

  The judge slammed his gavel onto the sounding block of his desk, and Hoodwinked jumped, actually jumped. That thud had a certain finality to it. An end of ends.

  The judge leaned forward in his chair. “Do you admit to belonging to the terror organization known as the Users?”

  “I do.” He nodded toward the envelope on the desk in front of him. “You’ll find a full confession in there. Along with names.” All fake, of course. He didn’t even know a single User. But he had to play this out to the end. He had to protect her, and he just wanted to get this over with as fast as possible. To hell with this sham of a trial.

  The judge lifted an eyebrow. “Then I will pronounce sentence. For the attack on this city’s most important asset, and for the countless gol lives lost, I sentence you to immediate death by beheading.”

  “Thank you your honor.” Hoodwink gave the onlookers a flourishing bow.

  “He’s mad!” someone in the audience shouted.

  Hoodwink cocked his head. “Mad? You’re the collared. It’s you who are mad!” If they didn’t believe he belonged to the Users before, they would now. The Users were the biggest advocates of an uncollared society. At least their graffiti implied as much. The Users wanted everyone running around with lightning. Somehow, Hoodwink didn’t think that was a good idea.

  “You’re collared too, User terrorist!” came the repartee from someone in the audience.
>
  Two guards restrained him. As if he could run anywhere with his arms and legs shackled. Both guards had swords belted to their waists, and one guard was an obvious gol, with the sword-and-shield symbol stamped into his breastplate. The other was collared, and his plate was free of markings. That seemed an odd dichotomy to Hoodwink—to be collared and free at the same time.

  Hoodwink decided to play up his terrorist role. He was rather enjoying this. He looked at the collared guard like a judge. “You’d help kill someone who only wants the same thing as you? Someone who wants to be free?”

  The guard elbowed Hoodwink in the ribs. “Keep silent gutter scum!”

  Hoodwink inhaled in pain. “That was uncalled for.”

  The guard jabbed him in the ribs a second time. Hoodwink bit down the pain, and kept quiet.

  The outer door near the judge’s desk abruptly flung open and three gols wheeled a guillotine in from the cold. Hoodwink’s heart sank when he saw it. He had hoped the snowdrifts were too deep to convey the death device from its storehouse, and that the executioner’s sword he’d seen in the dungeon would be favored instead. Flakes of snow followed the guillotine inside. Hoodwink shivered, and not from the cold.

  One of the gols slammed the door, shutting out the storm, and then the trio wheeled the guillotine forward, bringing it between the judge’s stand and Hoodwink.

  The crowd broke into a chant. “Behead! Behead! Behead!”

  As the guards escorted him to the guillotine, Hoodwink noticed the various scenes of decapitation imprinted on the blade. Severed heads with eyes and tongues sticking out in over-dramatization. Headless bodies pumping blood. The inscription brought a fresh shiver: “Through me pass the final Gate.”

  The guards forced Hoodwink to kneel. One of them stuffed a pillow under his knees. Funny, that they’d waste comfort on a man who’d soon know the ultimate discomfort. The gol lawmakers wanted to cast themselves as ethical. Beheading was quick and painless. And comfortable.

  The guards jammed his neck into the circular notch of the lower panel, and secured the similarly-notched upper plank over his collar, completing the head-prison. So much for comfort—Hoodwink was bound fast beneath that blade, locked in a hole that offered no leeway.

  “Behead! Behead! Behead!”

  The bronze bitch was the only thing protecting him from the deadly steel. Except that was no protection at all. The guillotine could cut right through the collars in a single blow. Made them seem like the paper collars children folded for themselves in their games of adulthood. With the headman’s sword, at least there was a chance that the first blow would merely cut into the collar, and maybe only graze the skin beneath. It usually took two or three strikes to actually reach the neck, even with a fully sharpened blade. Which was why the courts had replaced the sword, he supposed. The sword offered what only the condemned and the drunk had the courage to try—a chance at freedom. Face the beheader’s blade, and hope to your maker that it took the collar off and not your entire head. Hoodwink had only ever seen one man survive it, fifteen years ago. The man in question had escaped in a flurry of lightning strikes, only to have the soldiers track him down and execute him on the street.

  Hoodwink had stopped going to executions after that.

  At least that man had had a chance at survival, though. Hoodwink wouldn’t get the same chance—the cold steel of this machine that assembly-lined death made sure of that. Lift the blade. Flick the lever. Chop off the head. He felt sick to his stomach. Good thing he hadn’t eaten all day. It wouldn’t do to sick up in front of all these people.

  For her, he did this for her.

  But would it be enough?

  “Behead! Behead! Behead!”

  The executioner approached from the front. He was a fat gol, but not as stout as Briar. A black hood covered his face. Wouldn’t want to splash head blood on his features now would he? A long black apron hung around his neck, secured at the waist, just like a butcher’s. That’s what he was after all. A man-butcher. The red sword of his profession was proudly stamped into the apron.

  Hoodwink cursed the gol, but he couldn’t hear his own voice above the crowd. He noted that the executioner carried the blunt-tipped, green-colored sword from the dungeon at his waist. A backup in case the guillotine failed? He had no idea. Hoodwink wished all of a sudden he hadn’t stopped going to executions …

  And then the gol sidled from view, moving off to where he could work the mechanisms of the guillotine. Hoodwink tried to crane his neck to look, but the head-prison held him firmly.

  “Behead! Behead! Behead!”

  The cries of the crowd crescendoed, only to abruptly cease as a collective breath was held.

  Hoodwink heard nothing for long moments. Finally a distinct, malevolent CLICK sounded.

  He felt the vibrations as the blade descended along the guides. The loud rasp of steel on steel consumed all else.

  His life flashed before him. A childhood spent on the streets of Luckdown District. Puberty, and the years of swindling and wenching that had earned him his name. Then came the two weeks of power at fifteen years old, the two glorious weeks before the gols found and collared him. The collaring changed him, and he sobered up, attempted to earn an honest living. He almost succeeded.

  But then the jewel that lit up his life was taken away.

  She deserved so much better.

  The blade struck.

  CHAPTER 3

  The impact jolted his entire body. A dark veil descended over his vision. The basket rushing up to meet his head?

  No.

  He blinked a few times, clearing away the darkness. The collection basket remained where it was a pace below him.

  The impossible had occurred.

  His head was still attached to his body.

  Beside him, the executioner grunted in surprise. A few gasps came from the audience.

  Hoodwink felt his face grow hot. A weight like that of the entire world pressed on his neck. He felt vertebrae and tendons shift ever so slightly.

  It was obvious the blade hadn’t passed clean through the bronze bitch, but he couldn’t tell if any part of his own neck was severed, because the entire area throbbed. He had the presence of mind to wiggle his toes, and that told him what he needed to know.

  He heard the executioner straining beside him, and Hoodwink’s neck jerked up and down within the head-prison as the executioner repeatedly yanked the pulley linked to the blade. There came a pause, and the executioner must have looked at the judge, because Hoodwink heard him say, “Well keep trying you fool.”

  Hoodwink’s head jerked up and down more rapidly, and stars pocked his vision. The executioner set a heavy boot on Hoodwink’s shoulder and pressed hard. It felt like Hoodwink’s whole right side was caving in, while his neck bent the other way.

  Finally the blade slid free with a loud rasp. Hoodwink heard the killing instrument slam into the top of the guillotine, and he felt the vibration as the blade began its second beheading attempt.

  A tingle of power arose inside him, and time seemed to slow. It started as a spark, deep in his mind, a flicker of electricity that expanded outward and traveled down his neck, across his torso, into his arms and legs to the tips of his fingers and toes. The electricity pulsed through him in waves, a starving hound leashed before a helpless doe, waiting for its master to unleash its fury.

  The bronze bitch had sprung a leak.

  Hoodwink pushed against that leak and released the electrical energy held at bay for twenty years inside him.

  The entire apparatus exploded away from him. Guillotine, shackles, collar, blade.

  The courthouse erupted in screams as debris tore through the spectators. Hoodwink glanced at the nearest benches. The onlookers were bruised and bloodied. He tried not to look overly long. He’d already seen one man with a bloody stump in place of an arm, and another with a thick shard of wood protruding from his belly. Hoodwink didn’t need to see more. He knew those images would haunt him enough. He hadn’
t meant to hurt anyone.

  Beside him, the judge and nearby guards lay unmoving, bodies mangled and broken. The executioner himself was still standing, torso nailed gurgling to the judge’s desk by the guillotine blade. Hoodwink felt no regret for these. They were gols. Not real people like the spectators.

  The guards at the back of the courthouse—behind the wounded bystanders—were forcing their way forward through the mayhem. Hoodwink tried to draw more lightning, but couldn’t. He was so out of practice, he’d mistakenly used all his charge in that opening gambit. It would be hours, maybe days, before he fully recharged.

  He snatched up the judge’s ermineskin cloak, grabbed the executioner’s blunt-tipped sword, and made for the back door, the same door they’d carried the guillotine in from. The limp from this morning had worsened—a wooden fragment protruded from his leg, adding to the pain of his previously twisted ankle.

  Hoodwink threw his weight into the door and burst into an all-out snowstorm.

  The sudden cold took him aback but he forced himself onward. The frigid gale blinded him and brought tears to his eyes. He hardly recognized this for a city street. He could see maybe ten paces, no more. Snow drifts had buried everything, leaving only a blurry landscape of white mounds.

  He had to find shelter, and soon. The wind clawed right through his jail-issue orange robe.

  His limp actually improved out there. The cold numbed the pain, just as it numbed everything else. But he advanced no faster, because the snow swallowed his legs to the thighs.

  He heard shouts behind him as guards emerged from the courthouse. Hoodwink ducked down an alleyway, visible as such only because of the concave notch the drifts made between houses, and he waded hurriedly through the snow.

  He reached the alley’s edge and peered around it. Through the whirling snow he saw the spectators fleeing from the front of the courthouse. Good.

  He hid the sword in his robes and joined the crowd, just another spectator injured in what the criers would undoubtedly call a terrorist attack. He pulled the stolen ermineskin cloak tight, hoping it hid most of his jail-issue robes. There was a woman just ahead of him. She had a bloody stump for an arm.