Disclaimer: No copyright infringement in any way intended. I'm making no profit out of this.
Author's note: Johns is about fifteen years old in this story. It takes place about ten years before Pitch Black.
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Johns yawned. He leaned against the wall behind him, slouching comfortably on the cargo box. He scratched his nuts for a while, yawning repeatedly. Fuckin' borin' on that damn ship. Freighter. Just a short trip of one week. No cryo for this, much cheaper to just stay in the cargo hold and wait it out.
But so damn boring … His fellows were all sleeping. Curled up somewhere between the boxes and in the corners. Panting and grunting softly. Occasionally someone snored or farted.
Besides them there was only one other passenger. A man with dark skin and slightly graying hair, much older than them. Something over or around fifty. Fuck, probably nearly three or four times as old as Johns. He wore some kind of caftan and had a shoulder bag and a prayer mat with him. And a big gauge. A mercenary. He laid on the boxes at the opposite wall, sleeping too.
Johns sighed. He placed his own gun in his lap and closed his eyes. Wanted to sleep. Couldn't. Wasn't tired. And as he then heard some rustling and movement, he couldn't stop himself from opening his eyes.
The man was awake. He now sat on the box and had his prayer beads in hand. Johns watched the pearls sliding between dark brown fingers. Occasionally they clicked, the faint sound mixing with the humming of the engines and the grunting of his fellows.
After a while the man put the tasbih away and got something out of his bag. A book. Despite the reddish dim light he started reading it. A very boring sight. Nothing happening, just the turning of a page now and then.
Johns yawned. Considered going to the crapper at the back of the room to jerk off. Just as he had decided and was about to get up, the man said, "I can lend you a book, if you want something to read."
Johns looked over to him. The mercenary pulled a second book from his bag and held it up for inspection.
"Nah, no need for that," Johns replied. Books, generally anything to read, was shitty. He hated that. "But if you have a cig …"
The man chuckled softly. He burrowed around in a pocket of his caftan and pulled something out. Threw it over to Johns who caught it. A small, flat metal tin. Johns opened it. Tobacco, rolling paper and a lighter inside. He put some tobacco on a leaf, rolling it expertly into a slender, firm cigarette. He took the narrower end between his lips, lighting the cig. He inhaled deeply. Holding his breath, keeping the delicious smoke in his lungs as long as he could. Then he exhaled slowly through his nose, enjoying the warm, nice tingling in his body and brain.
"Tell me your name and I'll tell you a story," the man said to him.
Fuck, man, what's that? Time for fairy tales, or something? He sucked on his cig. Made some smoke rings. Silent. Thinking.
"William J. Johns," he said finally. Boredom had won.
"William. Wilhelm." The mercenary repeated his first name slowly. Then he kept still.
"On the old Earth, long before we built spaceships and populated the galaxy, it was the name of great rulers," he began after long moments of silence. "They were kings and emperors in Europe. That's the part of earth where your ancestors are from. Several Norman kings and German emperors bore that name. One of them was William the Conqueror. He lived in the eleventh century, counted by the calendar of the Christians. Anno Domini 1066 means in the year of our Lord 1066. They count the time in solar years, starting from the birth of their messiah. For us, it was the year 457 …"
Johns was amazed. Nearly 1450 years ago! Never before he had even considered what had happened such a long time ago. And he had never been to Earth … Fascinated, he leaned forward and gaped at the mercenary, taking s slow whiff of his cig.
"457, William invaded England. He led an army of Normans, Bretons, Flemish people, and Frenchmen to victory over the English forces of King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. In Westminster Abbey in London, he was crowned as English King. That made him the first Norman on the English throne …"
Curious, Johns listened to the mercenary's telling. A huge story unfolded itself. The man told him all sorts of things about William. Who his parents were. His father had two chicks to fuck, but in those days it had been forbidden to have more than one wife. You could only marry one woman. Whysoever. William's mother hadn't been the one Duke Robert had been married to. Therefore they had him called William the Bastard before he became William the Conqueror.
Cig was finished. Johns rolled a new one.
The mercenary told him where William had grown up. What he had done. Who had been his women. Whom he had fought. What he had accomplished as king. A cadastre. A thing where the estates in England were recorded. Domesday Book or something like that. Changed some shit about the administration. Johns didn't understand that fully, but he didn't ask.
The weapons and battles were much more interesting to him. To that he could relate. Could easily imagine. Back then they hadn't guns. Only swords, bows and arrows, lances and stuff like that. It made Johns think of that fucked up mission in the Tringa-System. Damn fuckin' swamps flooded with radiation and monstrous, armed to the teeth cyborgs. And not enough ammo to kill all of them. Even gone before the last rifle fucked up from the tons of sogging mud and dirt. A real piece of cake. Many died. Only he and a few others survived that shit.
Amazing how the men back then in William's time had been able to fight without guns. But when nobody had any, maybe it wasn't as bad. And if you even didn't know about such weapons, you didn't miss them at all. Yeah, that was why they had been able to fight with such shitty weapons 1450 years ago …
And the mercenary told him even more. Not only about William. Generally about Earth at that time, about this Europe. About the people who lived there. Normans and many others. Exciting to hear about, but not nearly as cool as William himself.
Johns smiled. William, the Conqueror …
the end