by Dorian Dawes
Ching Shih fixed her with a harsh gaze. “I’ve made a long career out of predicting worst-case scenarios, child.”
Talisha sighed. “It’s not that I don’t feel for your plight.”
“But you don’t trust me.” Ching Shih nodded. “I understand.”
Talisha walked to the cabin door. She froze in front of it, then lowered her head, shoulders heavy. “I’ll think about it. All right?”
“Then that is all I can ask,” Ching Shih whispered. “Good night, bounty hunter.”
Talisha left. Ching Shih stumbled into her seat at the table, fingers brushing over the panels. The holographic map vanished, leaving her in dim darkness. She removed the decorative crown from her forehead. It’d become so heavy these past few years.
Chapter Six
NERGAL DROVE THE tank far into the desert. He did his best to bandage his wounded body along the way, hoping the serum would begin to heal him. It seemed that over the years he’d developed a resistance to its curative properties. He could feel the wounds closing, but they were agonizingly slow, and the process torturous.
Eventually the tank ran out of fuel, coming to a creaking halt. He swore loudly, banging his fist against the controls. It’d all gone to shit. Sometimes it felt like the universe itself were conspiring against him, making a mess of all his plans. All he wanted was a place off this barren hellhole. Was that so difficult?
Clutching at his wounds, he clamored out of the tank and stumbled into the frigid winds. He’d been forced to discard most of his protective suit in order to bandage himself with tattered fragments of his shirt. He kept the coat he’d stolen from the tavern wrapped about his skinny shoulders as meager protection from the harsh atmosphere.
He’d tried to carry the rest of his weapons and chemical apparatus, but they proved burdensome, and were soon abandoned. All he had left was a vial of his precious serum. It’d be the last till he could find a working laboratory again.
The serum had kept him alive, but only just. The disease still churned and grew and multiplied within him. His lips cracked and peeled, and his gums bled fiercely if he gritted his teeth too tight. His thin gangrenous limbs protested this desert trek. He suffered every moment he was alive.
It would be so easy to collapse into the dust and rot here, leaving a vengeful corpse for some unlucky bandit to loot. His nest of diseases would live on infecting others long past his death. His suffering would at last be at an end. If there was an afterlife, he might see Dalton again.
Yet Nergal fought against extinction. He was still alive, after everything he’d been through and all he’d suffered. A withered husk of a man to be sure, but somehow still breathing, still capable of wreaking havoc to any who crossed him. He swore under his breath that if he died here and now, he’d find the high courts of the universe and sue.
For Doctor Isaac Nergal, death was always a possibility, but never an option. He was a festering sack of pestilence and death living an unlife full of torture and regret. More than that he was pissed. Anger and hatred are unpleasant emotions, but they provided the fires that sustained him, and kept propelling him forward through the darkness.
When he finally collapsed three hours later, it was with his fists clenched, still struggling to pull himself forward. He’d managed to crawl several paces, even after his legs had stopped carrying him. He kept his eyes open until weariness forced them closed. The last he saw before surrendering to unconsciousness were hands white as a corpse reaching down to grab him.
NERGAL’S EYELIDS FLUTTERED open. He was covered by a blanket and lying next to a warm furnace. Two scents filled his nostrils, baked beans over an open stove and the stench of death and carnage. Each left him nauseous. He rose slowly, letting the wool blanket fall from around his shoulders. He’d been stripped naked, and he hurried to cover himself up again.
It was a small house, barely insulated from the outside elements. It’d suffered the planet-side wars over the years, but somehow still stood intact. A host of survivors had taken shelter here over the years, leaving all manner of waste and refuse and the occasional graffiti to mark their passing. Their remains were scattered across the living room floor.
Nergal surveyed the bodies hurled across the room. The first body was a middle-aged man lying directly across from where the front door had been ripped from its hinges, then haphazardly shoved back into place. His intestines were spilling into his lap. The next body was a young white woman holding an empty carbine. She was left pinned to the wall by a chair leg protruding from her chest. There were three more corpses stacked in a pile just a few feet away. Their features were indistinguishable after someone had smeared their faces against the hot surface of the furnace.
From the bloody trail leading from the living room to the hall, Nergal could only assume there were more bodies scattered throughout the house. He rubbed his eyelids and hoped that whatever had wreaked all this mayhem wasn’t interested in coming for him next.
“Oh good, you’re awake.” The voice was familiar, and yet different. The vocal chords had shifted, grown coarser and meaner. “I was worried I might have to force-feed you.”
Nergal stared hard as a figure stepped into the room. He wore a pair of tattered black pants and heavy combat boots clearly stolen from one of the many corpses left strewn across the house. His skin was white as paper, and there were four insect-like legs bound in a black hairy carapace protruding from his back. There was no color to his eyes, just an unending blackness.
Despite all its mutations, the face was unmistakable. Blake Snidely smiled, revealing a row of sharp pointed teeth and the hint of mandibles growing along the inside of his mouth. Nergal shook his head in disbelief.
“Your serum,” Snidely said. “It had some rather interesting effects.”
“You dressed my wounds,” Nergal noted. “Took my clothes.”
“They were dripping wet from ice,” Snidely said. “You would have frozen to death.”
“That’s not what concerns me.” Nergal’s eyebrows furrowed. “You should be dead.”
Snidely brushed a strand of gray hair away from his face. Something about the mutation had shifted Nergal’s perceptions of the man. He was still a frail, bone-thin figure, but he seemed so much more at home with it all. His hips swayed with sensuous confidence as he approached, fingers brushing along Nergal’s bumpy cheek. Nergal almost recoiled instinctively.
“I’m immune to your disease now,” Snidely whispered. “Isn’t that a hoot?”
Nergal’s gave an uneasy smirk. There was nervousness in his eyes. “Previous occupants had some issues with letting you stay?”
Snidely chuckled. “If you saw a pale white monster approaching your door holding a naked green plague man, what would be your first reaction?”
“Shoot on sight,” Nergal said with a casual shrug. “I’m guessing the critter infection has left you with some added benefits.”
“I’m very fast,” Snidely said. “And well, the strength speaks for itself. Exciting part is they never even see me coming. I was nary a blip on their radar when I shut out the lights to this place. I crawled about on the ceiling to rip their heads from their necks.”
“I thought you had a proclivity for violence.” Nergal licked his lips. “It’s nice to see you coming into your own. What do you intend to do now?”
Snidely sat on the bed next to him. He took Nergal’s hands in his own. Their fingers touched and Nergal’s breath caught in his throat. He stared into Snidely’s eyes. Physical contact after so many years of isolation, it was almost frightening.
“My time with Plymouth is over,” Snidely said. “I’d be an experiment to them at best. More likely a liability to be expunged. I’m naught more than a monster now.”
“Being a monster…” Nergal’s voice fell to a timid whisper. “It isn’t all terrible. I’ve found that at times it can be quite freeing.”
Snidely wrapped an arm about him and slowly pressed Nergal against the bed. They stared at each other surrou
nded by filth and death. A macabre bond formed between them, one that can only be shared by the desperate and the unwanted, the hideous and reviled.
“It’s a new world for me,” Snidely said, pressing his forehead against Nergal’s. He straddled the other man’s legs. “Don’t make me walk it alone.”
Nergal laughed. “And to think when we first met, I hated you.”
“A lot has changed,” Snidely said with hissing laughter.
Nergal reached with both hands clamped around the back of Snidely’s head and kissed him. The strange jagged teeth cut along the inside of Snidely’s mouth as blood ran down the back of his throat. That made it all the more freeing, to abandon themselves into the twisted copulation of their own abhorrence.
“There will be no place in the universe for us,” Nergal said breathlessly.
“We’ll make our own,” Snidely responded, caressing his cheeks. “The Valran were once the most powerful force in the galaxy. That power should be ours.”
TALISHA WAS ESCORTED to a cabin on one of the schooners. The general carousing and sloshing drinks outside left most of the bunks empty. Only Bluebird and Rogers shared the room with her. She waved half-heartedly to them before falling with a slump into a bunk nearest them.
“What did the pirate want?” Bluebird asked. She was lying on her back with her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling.
Talisha shrugged. “My culture.”
Bluebird raised an eyebrow. “What does a pirate want with the disgraced house of Artul?”
“I think she means the Valran, ya big dummy,” Rogers muttered. His voice was muffled through his hat resting over his face as he lay with his legs propped up against the wall.
“Yeah, that.” Talisha exhaled wearily. “I meant the Valran, sorry. She thinks if I tell her their culture and history, she can sell it off in the coming years to the highest bidder. She’s convinced it’s the only way her people will survive.”
“Sounds manipulative,” Bluebird sniffed. “You have no responsibility to these people, Talisha. You know that right?”
“I don’t owe anyone anything,” Talisha said, and laughed a bit. “Doesn’t mean I don’t have, well…ethical issues.”
“I’ll give you some simple ethics,” Bluebird said, propping herself up by her elbow. “Reciprocity. What has she done for you?”
“If everyone acted like that no one would do anything for anyone.” Talisha removed chunks of her armor.
“That’s how the world operates, youngin’,” Rogers said. He rolled over in bed. “Aw, don’t mind me, I’m just feeling sorry for myself.”
“It’s shit,” Talisha spat back. She removed the rest of her armor, save for her arm cannon. She refused to be left completely defenseless.”Anyway, weren’t you all about protecting innocent and poor folks?”
Bluebird groaned. “This is not same thing. You are one woman. This is heavily armed fleet of pirates with some of the best technology and software in the entire galaxy. I do not think they are hurting for aid.”
“That’s not how Ching Shih made it sound,” Talisha said, throwing her hands in the air in frustration. “But you might be right.”
“That brings me to another thing.” Bluebird stood and folded her hands over her chest. “What she asks of you is no small favor. She wants to use your culture for capital gain.”
“But it’s not mine,” Talisha groaned. She clutched her hands to her head and wanted to scream. “Am I being selfish? I feel ownership of this shit.”
“The Valran aren’t with us,” Bluebird said. “True. But they entrusted your mother with their heritage. She passed it onto you. It’s your choice. You shouldn’t let some stranger bully you into thinking you owe them something you don’t.”
“About that,” Talisha said. “Outside of Mom and me? Not many people actually believe the Valran exist, and those that do aren’t concerned with their culture or religions. I might be letting it die with me if I don’t share it.”
“I’m going to bed. Y’all are making my head hurt,” Rogers called out and rolled over onto his side to face the wall.
Bluebird whistled and scratched the back of her neck. “You have a lot to think about, little bounty hunter. It is your decision after all. You want to do the right thing, and I respect that, but it’s not always so cut-and-dry. You have to choose the avenue of least harm and live with those consequences.”
“If I make the wrong choice?”
“If you do? Don’t whine about it. Fix it.” Bluebird moved back to her bunk and climbed in, causing it to creak noisily under her weight. Her feet reached well over the edge of the mattress. “Get some sleep, little one.”
TALISHA’S NIGHT WAS miserable. There were times when her body burned and she had to throw the covers across the room, only to retrieve them moments later as ice gripped her from the inside out. Her mind had trouble differentiating whether or not she was asleep or awake, drifting in and out of an uneasy state of half-consciousness.
Jefferson’s face flashed through her dreams, bloody and weeping. She stood amidst the burning wreckage of a vast city surrounded by corpses while the looming specter of her mother’s face held sway over all. Talisha ran past a horde of the screaming dead until the bodies clamoring for her aid grew too numerous and she had to fly above them.
Rising high into space she saw a gradient vision of amber and orange. Fading into view was the Plymouth satellite with its orbital cannon pointed at the planet below. Talisha screamed at it, even as a massive hand dragged it out of the sky. It melted into the form of a familiar arm cannon, and she saw the distinctive shape of a Valran helmet appear in the atmosphere. The helmet lifted, and it was her own face staring back at her. Talisha held her hands protectively in front of her eyes as her giant doppelganger fired the cannon at the planet, incinerating all.
She woke midscream.
Rogers had a steady hand on her shoulder. “Easy, darlin’. Bit early for screaming.”
“Sorry.” She placed a quivering hand against her forehead. “My cocktail of issues has gotten irritating, to say the least.”
“That being said,” Rogers said. “Might ya get that cannon out of my face?”
Sometime in the moment it’d taken him to shake her from her nightmare, she’d charged her arm cannon and had it placed directly under his jaw. She swore and lowered her arm, apologizing profusely. He stood and scratched his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” she said for the third time. She took a deep breath and ran her fingers through her hair. “I could’ve killed you.”
“You need to get a grip, cowgirl.” Rogers turned his back on her and went back to his bunk. “They’re promising a war today.”
“I know. I know.” Talisha began putting on her armor. She stole a glance at Rogers. He was sitting on the edge of his bunk with his head buried in his hands. “You all right?”
“Thinking I know why I got drawn to old Western types,” he said. “Men. Human men, they cry. Real life people cry. Even when they don’t wanna admit it. Ya need to release all that horribleness somehow.
“I can’t. I wasn’t built to. I was built as an enforcer. Ya know there were supposed to be others like me? Some planet with a police brutality problem thought that maybe robots could police without prejudice.”
“I’ve heard the story.” Talisha moved closer to him. “The project was scrapped wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yuppers. Turns out my progeny shared all the prejudices of those who programmed them. Whole line had to get scrapped. It’s how the good folk of Dover Town were able to get an enforcer model so cheap.
“Now folks in Western films, least the men-folk, they don’t cry. They feel and love, but they don’t cry. It ain’t realistic, ’cause human men cry.”
“You saw them as machines,” Talisha said. “They were like you.”
“Like me,” Rogers repeated. “Or like someone I wanted to be. I think those men could all feel pain, but they didn’t know how to express it, save for by up
and shooting someone. They took all that mess inside them and went and protected people with it. Thought that’s what I wanted to be.”
“There’s worse things in life to aspire to,” Talisha said, sitting down beside him. “You’re not a bad person, Rogers.”
“I’m not a person,” he growled. “And if I was, I don’t wanna be like the folks in those films. Even the best of them, they know nothing but killing. The more I become like my heroes, the less I wanna have anything to do with them.”
“I know exactly where you’re coming from,” Talisha said wincing. Her shoulders drooped, like a heavy weight had crashed against them.
Rogers chuckled a bit. “Can only imagine. Living up to the legacy of the great Talisha Artul’s gotta have its drawbacks.”
“You spend your whole life trying to be like someone,” she said. “Then one day, you look in the mirror and realize that you’ve succeeded in every way imaginable, but somehow you still hate yourself.”
“Took the words right out of my mouth, but at least you can cry.”
“Which leads to dehydration-induced headaches,” Talisha countered. “Tears aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”
“No,” he shrugged. “I guess not. Listen, about yesterday…”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We both made mistakes. I think, I’m also learning I’m not the hero I’ve always wanted to be.”
“I don’t believe in fate,” Rogers said, rising to his feet. “But it’s a humdinger of a coincidence us being two souls coming together like this.”
Talisha returned to her bunk to begin putting on the rest of her armor. She turned to face him. “Sure is. What do you think it means?”
He retrieved his hat from his bunk and placed it over his head. “I dunno. Reckon maybe if we don’t like becoming the people who inspired us, we should become something else. Maybe we’ve just outgrown our heroes. Think it’s high time we stepped it up a notch?”
Talisha’s smile faded. “I’d like to, but I’m not sure how.”
