But not everything was looking up.
Old rivalries died hard and the cabin fever of Nexus got to many Zonians. Gangsters from Galis, Red Sand and Titan City periodically attempted to revive their old gangs. Don Marzio had already been brought in by James’ request to shut down an attempt to resurrect the Marzio Mafia. Survivors of the Zenites, especially, were not so easily convinced. Already, twelve Zenites had been killed by Defiant guardsmen after attempting to take over an entire habitat dome as their new turf. The old Zenites in James’ leadership had shown discomfort at the police action but didn’t comment.
James didn’t mourn the dead gangsters. This was a new age. James knew that he may have been one of the dead not so long ago, but he was a different man now. This was his turf. The Defiant were the lords of Nexus, capital of Nova Zarxa. Gang, revolutionary government or state – they were the law and the law required the liberal use of force when necessary.
Civilian Zonians appreciated James’ heavy-handed approach to troublemakers. While they had been held back on Zona Nox due to the constant crime, they were able to flourish on Nova Zarxa. Zarxans thought James was too lax. They were used to much more repression. They didn’t complain about the extra credits from deregulation, however. Despite the vastly inflated population, free trade was allowing more than enough goods to flow in and out of Nexus. This was very much needed. Nova Zarxa’s population had more than doubled in a matter of months. That meant a higher need for food, necessities, building materials and all manner of the supplies needed for survival.
In the early months, Nexus and the outlying Nova Zarxan settlements faced starvation multiple times. Relief brought in by Grag-Tec and Aegis was barely enough to fight-off famine. The urban farming systems of Nova Zarxa were not prepared to feed so many people. As a result, the planet relied on food imports from off-world. The likes of which Erryn Kolheim had been in charge of running. Only the most daring and skilled freighter pilots attempted the jump. Pegg pirates had become even more brazen along the best routes to the core worlds and the squogg Black Fleet was rumoured to be parking off near Askaia Prime. Even with the Xank blockade finally ended, due to Aven Smith’s machinations James suspects, getting food into Extos III was still a challenge.
The freeing of Grengen from Zerian colonialism had changed that. The jungle world was rich with fish, crops, fruit and game. The now freed dinosaur people of Grengen, with the aid of Aegis and Zonian shippers, now helped feed Nova Zarxa – in exchange for creds, tech and all the necessary components to upgrade their own society.
James felt a warmth while watching the developments of Grengen. He was watching a civilisation develop. A people, enslaved for so long, break free and reach for the stars. Krag-Zot also looked oddly pleased by the development of Grengen. When pressed, he just said:
‘They grow up so fast.’
James had asked for details but the areq chose when to be open and when to be amusingly cryptic.
James left the hangar and its melancholic mechanics and took the tram-system to the northern district of Nexus – the Grag-Tec offices. Grag-Tec, while no longer the de facto rulers of Nova Zarxa, was still its biggest corporate benefactor. It was only James’ personal relations with Quok which prevented the megacorporation from pulling out of the planet after the Defiant ended their mandated monopoly. Quok had managed to convince his superiors that a free Nova Zarxa with a free market was much better for Grag-Tec in the long run. It would drive innovation and challenge them. When that didn’t work, he just appealed to the exanoid’s love of the Great Exchange. All exanoids were free marketeers at heart – or they weren’t really exanoids.
James was headed to the Grag-Tec districts to catch up with his old friends, but also to throw his weight around. Grag-Tec, for all the help they had given the Defiant, were still a foreign power and needed to be reminded that they were allowed to function at his behest. As much as James was pro-free markets, megacorporations such as Grag-Tec could not be seen as mere businesses. They were military powers. Nations in their own right.
The tram stopped at a routine checkpoint as it passed by the central hub. Some people on the tram-station got on the mag-rail carriage. As the platform emptied, James saw a familiar figure sitting on a bench, staring. Bearded, muscled. Eyes hollow, staring into the void. He wore a dirty and dishevelled waist-coat. Liquid stained the fabric.
Marshal.
Even James’ guards noticed him crease his forehead. James didn’t care.
Let them know I’m human. Not some god. Not an unfeeling stone.
He wanted his bodyguards to know that he wept for his friends.
Marshal had been hit hard by the death of his family. Once James’ mentor, he was now a husk. There were no battles to distract him anymore. And he was getting too old to start them himself, despite his approaching superhuman levels of nanite cybernetics and genetic enhancement, not to mention his decades of experience and forging in the fires of war. Marshal was broken, and James didn’t know how to fix him.
The tram mercifully sped off, leaving the sight of the wretched Marshal a distant blur. They exited the sleek silver tunnels and onto the mag-rails outside of the disjointed city habitats. No ceiling to hide Nova Zarxa – the blighted Resh – now. Grey skies above. A shimmering, silver city all around. A sea of crystal below. James steeled himself. The warp-crystals, left on this planet after it was blighted by the Imperials so many thousands of years before, were his source of power and weakness. When he glanced at them, he saw the void. The speaking, terrifying void in his dreams. The one which had spoken to him when he saw the edal girl – Re’lien.
James had been dreaming a lot. Dreams of his own past had stopped. For a long time, he had been subjected to realistic and twisted memories that he had always tried to repress. His first kill. The time he failed to save a whore. His now dead family. Whatever being, conscious or not, wanted him to learn something from his dreams, didn’t think he needed to see his gut wrenching past anymore. That was a small mercy. Neither did he dream of Kurt, anymore. The ancient Trooper no longer assailed his dreams. James had sent Aven Smith on a search for records on the figure in his dreams. Such a figure had served in the first generation of Troopers, but not much more was recorded. He had disappeared from the history books. Like a ghost. But he had been real. And James had watched his life.
Now, James dreamed more than dreams. Too lucid. Too clear. In them, he saw a blighted Zona Nox. A gutted Galis. And he spoke to a being that sought to destroy him and everything like him.
And he saw the edal girl. Re’lien. The edal diplomat from Mars. He would need to meet with her soon. But the thought filled him with trepidation. He needed to discuss the issue with Krag-Zot. The areq was cryptic at almost all times, but James may be able to press some more information from him about the girl. Krag-Zot was sure to be looking more into her – seeing as she was apparently powerful enough to challenge even James’ power.
But that was not why James was afraid. Rather, his fear stemmed from another feeling in his gut. A worry that rather than hate this girl from the race of his enemies, he would like her.
The tram docked at the Grag-Tec platform and he disembarked with his retinue. The green logo of Grag-Tec, a symbol of grain under stylised shaking alien hands, was emblazoned on the wall opposite the tram door. Many employees stopped to stare. His presence was not so rare as it to be a miraculous day, but many still stopped to adequately examine the God of Nova Zarxa. The grays called him something different. Grag-Po. The legendary revolutionary who had overthrown the dictator Gwok. Grag-Tec was named in his honour. The grays of Nova Zarxa seemed convinced that James was the reincarnation of their centuries dead hero. He really wished Molok would stop preaching as such.
While nobody was looking, James took a deep breath and steeled himself. The rebel in him said to act human, to shake the core of these people’s beliefs. To force them to face reality. But the prudence in him told him to keep up the façade. To be the one they wanted him to be. To
be the warpmancer who defended human, gray, exanoid and all manner of free races from Xank and Imperia. The protector. The Defiant. To a large extent, it was not a façade. James had been the leader and figurehead of the Zonian rebellion and had led the defence of Nexus against the Imperial Star Horde. But he had not been the only one. Many who deserved much more praise now lay incinerated, their obituaries long committed to the undying realms of cyberspace.
But at the behest of Krag-Zot, Aven Smith and many of James’ closest friends, he accepted the mantle. He accepted the praise and adoration. He would be the leader of Nova Zarxa – because they needed someone to give them hope. He didn’t feel that he deserved the respect, but if it was for the best, he would take it on the chin.
James’ authoritative stride through the Grag-Tec facility brought him to a small office in the administrative section of the head offices. He knocked, politely, and a deep voice bade him enter.
‘James! Here to grace my hallowed halls? Please, take a seat.’
Ryan Rebeck, one-time rancher, gangster and then survivor in James’ team back on Zona Nox, was beaming. He still looked the same, despite his new job as a clerk in Grag-Tec.
‘Quok still got you on data-pushing?’ James grinned, signing for the guards to wait outside, before taking a seat.
‘Data is power, James. But…he did offer me a promotion. I refused. Didn’t feel ready.’
‘You’re lagging behind the old crew. Everyone else rising up.’ James crossed his legs and leant back. He was finally able to relax, here with his friend.
‘Because they were part of the crew. Cause they your mates.’
‘You’re my mate, Ryan.’
Ryan smiled. ‘I know that. But that’s the problem. I don’t want to be the boss cause of who I know. I want to rise because of my competence. Because of a job well done.’
‘Can you really rise that way, though? You got this job because you knew Quok.’
‘I know that. Got a lucky break. But that’s why I must work harder. Must prove myself worthy. Quok put faith in me. I must earn it even more if I had got employed in an interview. That’s what I owe to Quok.’
Ryan glowered, eyes downcast. Something had come to his mind.
‘What is it?’ James asked.
‘Quok’s been good to me, you know?’
‘Been good to all of us,’ James replied.
‘He’s a good guy. But…you heard what happened?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Skite way to find out,’ Ryan shook his head, almost muttering to himself. ‘That edal that arrived yesterday knew his daughter. Forwarded the message that she’d been killed.’
‘Oh, vok! I…is he…how is he holding up?’
‘It’s funny – we humans and exanoids known each other for over half a millennium, but there’s still things we don’t understand about each other. Quok seems human a lot of the time, right? But he seems to be unfazed by the news. Still oversees the facility. Still keeps a happy face on for the board, and the workers. Keeps smiling when he’s around me. But I can see it. There’s a glint in his eye. Moisture. A twitch. He’s hiding it…deep down. I don’t know if I could. Don’t know if it’s healthy.’
‘Quok has his own ways.’
‘I just wish he would confide in me. He doesn’t have to be the Grag-Tec planetary CEO with me around. We’ve fought side-by-side. We’ve bled for each other. That means something.’
‘Quok will do as he does. If we care about him, then all we can do is be there when he needs us. But it is interesting how the news came to us…’
‘Through the edal, you mean?’
‘Yes…quite…’
‘You met her, yet?’
James awoke from his pondering and raised his eyebrow at Ryan incredulously. That seemed to lighten the mood a bit. Ryan’s mouth twitched into a grin.
‘What’s with that expression? You the boss of this rock. We know she’s a diplomat. Supposed to talk to you. Don’t tell me you’ve left it to the right goodie-two-shoes Chancellor Darren Peterson. If she ain’t an Imperial now, she’s sure to become a sympathiser after that.’
James laughed, the dark reverie of the topic before sinking into the past.
‘Darren isn’t that bad. He rebuilt this city. I feel bad for sacking his store. He still doesn’t know I had a hand in it.’
‘We’ve all changed. He was a con-artist back in Galis. I was a brawler. You were a sneak thief. What are we now? Chancellor. Clerk. God.’
‘Please don’t call me that…’
‘You know I jest.’
‘But many do not. Gretswald…I sometimes wish he was still an Imperial preacher.’
‘Would be hard for him to be one after what they did to Nexus. Did you hear that he killed some Imperials himself?’
‘I did. Cut them up with a machete. He’s become very Zonian for a Glaris.’
Ryan feigned a tear. ‘They grow up so fast.’
Ryan then leaned forward and clasped his hands together. ‘But back to the topic – why haven’t you spoken to the edal?’
‘Matters of state…’
‘Mozar-skite. We both know you spend your days touring Nexus cause you’re guilty you have nothing better to do. You should be interrogating, or talking to, the edal.’
‘It’s just…this is embarrassing.’
Ryan’s grin seemed to split his head in two.
‘You got a crush on a xeno?’
Ryan meant it as a joke, but as James’ face reddened, Ryan’s grin subsided. Ryan, despite him no longer holding the moniker of Racist Ryan, was still xenophobic towards particular species. Accepting that exanoids were not that bad was very different from accepting inter-species relations between a human and the ruling race of the Imperial Council. Before Ryan could get any dangerous ideas, James responded.
‘I told you before that I struggle to sleep, right?’
‘Yeah, you got bags the size of mozar-bulls under your eyes right now.’
‘I get very odd dreams. Sometimes bad, sometimes neutral. Never really good.’
‘We all getting the dreams, James. No war to distract us, so we remember past ones.’
James shook his head. ‘This is different. Used to just be memories. But something in my dreams has been tormenting me. Talking to me. I think it’s meant to be the leader of the enemy. It shows me Zona Nox. It gloats.’
‘What does this have to do with the xeno?’
‘She was in one of the dreams - a week before she arrived here. Never seen her before, obviously. But she looked the same in my dream. And, Krag-Zot…’
‘Krag-Zot is a mystical crackpot putting ideas in your head. Bad enough he was Xank.’ Ryan shivered. ‘He creeps me out.’
‘Creepy or not, Krag-Zot is the best I have to learn about my powers. He says that the edal has warp-power as well.’
‘That could be dangerous, James. One of you is great – because it is you. But having one of those Imperial doom-casters walking these halls? I don’t like it.’
‘Yobu trusts her. Confirmed her identity with his eye-scanner thing. She also knows too much that an Imperial spy wouldn’t really note. The fact that she was friends with Quok’s daughter, as you have said. The fact that Erryn knows her friend. These are people I trust. If they trust her, we should at least give her the benefit of the doubt.’
Ryan sighed. ‘Sure, James. I will try. Will treat it as another step in my rehabilitation. If I can learn that grays and exanoids aren’t so bad, then maybe not all edal are monsters.’
‘Don’t need to do anything. My responsibility. And you’re right, I need to talk to her. And I will, right now. Please send Quok my regards. I will talk to him, when I can.’
Ryan nodded, and they said farewell.
As James exited the Grag-Tec facility and headed back to Fort Nexus, however, he couldn’t help but feel a niggling feeling at the back of his head.
Crush on a xeno.
Couldn’t be. He hated the Imperials. Distru
sted edal. But he couldn’t help but feel a burning in his chest and a shameful realisation that he thought Re’lien was really quite intriguing.
“Our syns and AI have never been a threat to us. Show them the respect befitting their function, and they will continue to serve. They are much more agreeable than our organic auxiliaries, I dare say.” – Logistics Lieutenant Stephen Tacson, AI Programmer and Advocate from Kingsley Bay, Venus.
Chapter 4.
Introductions
Smoking clerks kept a wide berth from Re’lien as she leant up against the wall of the Fort Nexus balcony, only a thin glimmer keeping the fresh purified air from the toxic outside. She didn’t mind, that much. She didn’t like the acrid smell of cigarette smoke. At best, it made her feel giddy. At worst, it reminded her of Xerl.
Her safety had been assured by Yobu, the highest ranking Defiant member she had met so far. Despite her position as envoy from the Trooper Order, the de facto largest human military power in the galaxy, she had not been granted an audience with even Chancellor Darren Peterson, the head of government of the Nova Zarxa state. Much less the fabled Defiant – James Terrin.
Re’lien’s diplomatic training had helped her stay stone-faced when hearing the words ‘Defiant’, but she had been genuinely surprised. The void, Grexus or whatever it was, had spoken to a being called the Defiant in her visions. Was this James Terrin the one who had shared her warp-vision of a blighted world?
Even without the anxiety of her warp-visions and her past refusing to let go, Re’lien had run into additional trouble on Nova Zarxa. Her job was to represent Mars on a Trooper world. But this was no longer a Trooper world – and its leadership were seemingly ignoring her. Re’lien involuntarily clenched her fists as some smoke wafted towards her.
How am I supposed to be a diplomat if nobody will speak to me?
Re’lien promptly calmed herself.
Ascension Page 14
