The Kinslayer

Hox slept in the turret. It was the only place to go about it, as he didn't want to stay in T-Bone-Junction longer than necessary. He had forewarned Linda who had agreed under the condition he kept his ECHO on high volume, in case she needed to wake him up quickly. That case didn't come to pass and all in all Hox scrounged up somewhere around eight hours of sleep. When Linda announced that she needed a break, they switched places after a short and very serious discussion about the conduct in Linda's cockpit.

While driving (and avoiding the occasional wildlife) Hox had ample time to plan. As the Lance were concentrated on the Parched Fathoms and Old Haven, going south seemed the sensible thing to do. Crossing the Dust posed a slight problem, but Scooter had told him of a useful waystation, the garage of his sister Ellie. Beyond the Dust were freedom and apparently green highlands. Scooter had listed a couple of towns that could be considered safe down there, without failing to mention that he kept Catch-A-Ride-stations operational throughout the region (and expanding). He and Jess would be able to start anew, far away from the Crimson Lance and their assassins.

Linda was used to sleeping in the car and after merely six hours she was rested and awake again. While the rest of the drive would only take about half an hour, Linda threatened violence when Hox didn't comply to her demand for a switch immediately and the mercenary obeyed. Not least, because he could completely understand her in that regard. Linda spent two full minutes to double- and triple-check the entirety of her cockpit, before they got moving again.

"So, where will you be going now?", Hox asked after a while. The better part of the drive, one of them had been asleep and he was in a chatty mood, facing the prospect of exploring southern Pandora with Jess.

"The Hodunks are hosting a speed-race in a couple of days", Linda replied evenly. "There's good money for the first three."

"Have you ever been south of the Dust?"

"I've been everywhere." There was no pride or bluster in her voice. She was merely stating a fact and Hox believed her.

"Any place down there you can recommend?"

"Overlook is a nice enough village. I like it. Friendly people, good food and a distillery at the gates. Best whiskey in the region."

"Zafords?"

"Yes."

"How is the job-market in the…"

And that was when he heard the gunshots. Faint. But quite a lot of them.

"Sounds like a war", Linda commented. "Booster."

"Copy", Hox replied and steadied himself. The sinking feeling in his guts had nothing to do with the violent acceleration. There was nothing else in the vicinity of Desert's Eye. There was just the town. Was there a bandit attack going on? Had another giant Skag appeared at the gates? Or had he been too slow and the assassin…?

Then they crested a hill and Linda stepped on the brakes so forcefully, Hox was almost yanked from his seat.

The gunshots had teetered down by then and a deathly silence had descended on the town in the distance. They were still quite far away, but it was plainly visible that nothing was moving on the walls or beyond the wide-open gate. Three red assault pods stuck in the ground in front of the town gate, their hatches gaped open.

Linda cursed viciously and threw the Runner into reverse.

"What are you doing?", Hox yelled.

"Getting away from that town", Linda said. "Those are Lance assault pods and I don't want to get involved. Neither will you, by the way."

"The hell I will! Get us closer! We can use the scrapyard as cover to advance on the town…"

"No, I won't. If you're intending suicide by Lance, you're free to get out now, but don't drag me into this mess."

"There could still be people…"

"No! That town is dead as a Skag in deep space. I've seen the Lance cleaning up, they are thorough. They even shoot Claptraps, though I admit that's something to be thankful for."

"Fuck you, get us closer!"

Linda abruptly turned the car around. "I'll do nothing of the sort. Now, get out or stay alive, your choice."

"Keep my share! Just get me to the scrapyard!"

The Runner came to another abrupt halt. "This is as close as I'll ever come to robbery. Or would that be body-stripping?"

To Hox' unbelievable relief Linda turned left, circling the town while keeping a healthy distance. He rummaged through his SDU. Once at the scrapyard, he would make his way from cover to cover, until he could reach the town and get inside. Given all indications, he'd have to be as quick as possible and therefore a slow and steady advance with the Diaub was out. Instead, he opted for the triple barrelled shotgun. It would serve in the confines of the town streets or if anything surprisingly came around the same corner as he did.

"Alright, I'm not getting any closer!", Linda announced and halted the car. "Not with that super useful Lance-mark on my wing."

Hox was already on the ground, when she finished. "Can you at least stick around for a while?"

"Half an hour", she replied immediately. "If you're not back within half an hour, I'll drive on and never look back."

"Are you kidding me? Just the time it will take to get to the town and back from here will take half of that!"

"Is there anyone around here offering a better deal?"

"I'll take it", Hox gnarled and sprinted off. Linda had parked behind a dune that obscured the view on the town (and vice versa on her Outrunner), but after he had crested it, the scrapyard was already in spitting distance. Half an hour suddenly seemed at least manageable. Nevertheless Hox sprinted on, until he reached the cover of a scrapheap and crouched low.

Nothing had shot at him and by the sounds of it, nothing was moving. He waited for a couple of frantic heartbeats, then he carefully peeked over the scrap at the town. Deadly silence. The gates on this side were open, too.

Not good. Not in the slightest.

Hox advanced. His heart was beating so hard he was sure it was audible outside of his own ears. Something awful had happened here, but he would be damned if he didn't at least find out what…

And then he saw the first signs of awful.

Louis was sprawled over his workbench. A horrible amount of blood drenched the sand beneath, but it took Hox a moment to realise that there was no bullet wound. The scrap-dealer had been stabbed. Straight through the heart.

Gonkh's helmet was lying a couple of steps away, but its owner had made it to the next scrap-pile. He, too, had been stabbed through the chest, multiple times in fact, but that was not the worst. Hox suddenly knew, why Gonkh had been wearing the helmet. It had handily concealed the red, skull-like head with the bulging eyes that sat atop an abnormally long and thin neck growing out of what appeared to be a mouth between the shoulder-blades. He had to turn away and take some steadying breaths, upon which he discovered that the mutant had at least managed to take one attacker with him: A thin figure, armoured and masked, in the colours of the Crimson Lance, lay motionless at the top of the scrap pile. Judging by the position the body had come to rest in, its spine was broken, yet the armour made it quite clear that the attacker had been a female. Clutching a thin device in each hand that was undoubtedly an unlit plasma-sword.

Lance-assassin.

He forced down bile and pushed on, into the town proper. Bodies were littering the street. Linda had been correct; the Lance was thorough. Men, women and children, residents and drifters, sane people and Psychos, he saw them all, stabbed through the heart, without mercy, without fail. Doors had been kicked in and he only dared glimpse into the gun-shop of old Harrows. Apparently, he would not have to worry about Marcus Kincaid any longer.

Hox skirted the lake, because it was relatively open terrain, but peeking around corners he saw that some townspeople had tried to make a stand on the lakeshore. The Skag-hunter brothers had died back to back, slumped against each other, shotguns still in hand. Marshal Jerousec lay topmost on a pile of corpses, clutching a rifle. His head was missing. Tourist-Trap had been caught in the open as well, he lay spread-eagle in the sand, his optical sensor shattered. Hox wished back the days when the Hyperion-bot had been his biggest concern.

In the distance, metal clanged against metal. Something heavy impacted into sand. Someone bellowed in pain or rage. Swishing sounds, as if someone was brandishing a sword. Undoubtedly, there was a fight raging, close to the main gate, close to the assault pods. Hox stayed in his cover and when the sounds didn't abate, he pressed on. His shotgun raised a bit higher, his finger a bit tighter on the trigger.

He was exhausted and terrified, when he carefully pushed himself through the backdoor of the 'Last Drink'. Why had he even come this far? There were still Lance-assassins at large here. What did he need to prove? Desert's Eye was a ghost town now, that much was obvious and the living had no business here. The entire town had been butchered; how could he still hope that a random bartender had been spared?

He looked around the tavern. Toby had fallen behind the bar. Only his boots were visible. Tables and chairs were overturned, patrons lay in unnatural positions in their own blood and in the middle of it all – there was Jess. She lay straight on her back, both her legs outstretched, her hands folded on her stomach. A smile on her face. A stab wound in her chest.

Despite the shock of seeing his friend dead, Hox' most immediate concern was the position of the body. No one fell like this, not after what he had seen in the streets. Someone had deliberately positioned Jess that way, someone had given her a little morsel of dignity, and only her. Why? And who?

A loose board creaked behind Hox. He spun around and fired without even looking, all three barrels, as quickly as the mechanism allowed. Just in time.

The Lance assassin, swords in hand, was blown off her feet. At the laughable distance of one metre, her armour did her as much good as a suit of wet paper. Blood gushed from the wounds and one of the plasma-swords dropped to the ground. Despite a mortal dose of lead in her system, the assassin got back on her feet disturbingly quickly and disturbingly graceful, too. Hox stumbled backwards, pumping the shotgun as fast as he could, and got her twice more, when she jumped at him. This time for good. Even Atlas could make its elite only go so far and four loads of buckshot at point blank range was certainly too much.

His head was swimming. Hastily he scrambled back into a corner of the building that was made of strong, metal plates. Not even plasma-swords could cut through that, his instincts and a couple of seconds later his education told him. What to do now? He had seen everything there was to see and he had made enough noise to attract everyone and anyone who might just be alive in this place of death. How much time left until Linda turned away? Ah, fuck her, he had more pressing worries. He had to do something for Jess. Bury her? Here? It seemed a noble enough gesture, yet there might still be…

The door opened and another Lance assassin entered the 'Last Drink', swords drawn. She quickly scanned the room, took in her dead comrade and then the quivering man with the shotgun who had hunkered down in the corner. "Oh, you killed a sister", she said, menace and condescension bleeding from her voice. "I'll have your head for that."

"Come get it then, you rotten-cunt bitch!", Hox roared defiantly. Only then did something horrible occur to him: His gun was empty. And if he reloaded, the assassin would know that too, and then she would know that there would be no risk for her to close in and run him through.

"Colourful language for a dead man", the assassin replied and approached carefully.

Something flat and round flew through the air and hit her square in the chest. The assassin was lifted off her feet and thrown on a pile of broken furniture and dead patrons, where she lay wheezing. Hox took the chance to hastily cram shells into his shotgun, while a third assassin entered the bar. She had a sword in her right hand and a shield with an engraved, red Omega on her left arm. Her mask was gone and she radiated fury and grief with such vehemence that Hox would have taken a step back, if he could.

"ENOUGH!", the newcomer bellowed. "Leave him be! That's an order!"

"Ah, but I'm afraid you don't command anymore, sister dear", the first assassin replied in a sing-song voice, getting back on her feet. "Not after what you did to the rest of the squad. They'll have your badge for this, at the least."

"Stand back. Now!"

"Or what? Are you going to court-martial me, squad-sergeant? Are you going to kill me, sister dear? We are family…"

"NO!", the assassin with the shield roared. "You killed your family, remember? I killed my family. Every last… one of them…" At this point her voice almost broke. "We all killed our family! Now, you're going to leave that man in peace or I'm going to bury my sword so deep in your guts even trained surgeons won't find it for days!"

The assassin seemed to mull that for a second, then she launched towards the woman in the doorway with inhuman speed. The squad-sergeant reacted as swiftly, blocking both blades with her shield. And then she literally disappeared. The other assassin snarled, spun hectically and before she could locate her cloaked sister, a sword pierced her chest from behind. She toppled over, while the squad-sergeant turned visible again, pinned her with a heavy boot to the chest and slammed her shield down on the masked head. The skull was shattered within the mask and blood trickled from a crack in the side.

The squad-sergeant turned her gaze towards Hox. There was no blood on her blade, it had cooked off immediately, but a faint red trail was splattered on the shield and on the assassin's face… her face. The piercing blue eyes, the black-blueish hair that peeked out from the armour's integral hood, even the form of the lips… Hox gaze darted between Jess on the floor and the squad-sergeant.

"You're from this town?", the Lance-assassin asked hoarsely.

"What if I am?", Hox said shakily. His defiance had taken its cue and gotten the hell out.

"I'm not going to hurt you", she assured him and switched off her sword, as she spoke. "I just need to know… did you know these people?"

"Aye. I did. Most of them, at least. Some were friends." His gaze flicked towards Jess and it did not go unnoticed.

"Was she a friend of yours?", the assassin asked with sudden urgency in her voice.

Hox could barely nod.

After a very long pause, the assassin spoke again: "She was my sister. And I murdered her." She turned to Hox, dropped her shield and spread her arms. "Do you want vengeance? Take it. Just… shoot. I… God, I tried…"

"Jess' sister is dead", Hox replied as if in trance. "That's what she told me. Killed alongside her parents by one of your bunch. By one Omega squad-sergeant Athena."

The assassin threw her head back and let out a howl, half mad laughter, half anguished scream. "She never found out where the little Atlas assassins come from, I suppose." Her voice dropped into a low, hypnotic, feverish pitch: "They kidnap little girls. Give them a loaded gun. Force them under threat of death and worse to shoot their own parents. Torture them mentally and train them physically and sometimes the other way around. Until Atlas has a perfect human weapon. So… I am Omega squad-sergeant Athena. And I am Jess' sister."

Hox thought of things to say and came up empty.

"I knew she was here, on Pandora", Athena continued. Slowly she rounded an upturned table and knelt next to Jess. She cupped her sister's face and gently brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead. "I tried to find you. And once I did, I would have left the Lance and we… we'd have been together again. We would have outrun Atlas and found a new life somewhere else. And then they sent us here… no names, no coordinates... just kill everything… standard orders… standard mission… thermal vision only… and you recognised me, didn't you? You cried out my name, I thought that curious, so I took off the mask… and you smiled, when you saw me. And then… nothing. Nothing ever again." Finally, Athena raised her head. "You won't shoot me, will you?"

"No", Hox stuttered. "No. Doesn't seem right. At all. But thanks for offering."

Athena made a sound between a chuckle and a sob and gently lowered Jess' head to the ground. "I meant it. I was just ready to die and not have to suffer any of… of this any longer. It was… I don't know. It's gone now."

Very slowly and very carefully Hox left his corner and walked over to where Jess lay. "I… I would like to bury her, if that is alright with you. Is it… is it quite safe to go outside?"

Athena nodded. "I killed the rest of my squad. Maybe the Skags are already here, though I doubt it. And Atlas will send reinforcements in a while, so I would not stick around if I were you. I'll give them a warm welcome, though. There is vengeance to be had and trust me, I will have my share."

"Count me in", Hox blurted out. "They killed everyone I knew, if you're going to war with Atlas, I'm going with. That… that is to say, if you… I mean… you're a human weapon assassin and I'm just a stranger…"

"No, it's fine." Athena bent forward and kissed her sister on the forehead. Tenderly she unwound the grey scarf from Jess' shoulders, pressed it to her chest for a moment and then wrapped the keepsake around her own neck. "Go ahead and bury her. Not here, the Lance will soon send their reinforcements. Can you take her somewhere safe?"

"Sure."

Athena stood. She tapped the retainer on her left arm and her shield came flying from where she had dropped it. The grief in her face was rapidly turning to raging fury. "Good. After I'm done here, I'll go to the Parched Fathoms, that's where the bastards are based. I'll probably make for T-Bone-Junction. You can meet me there in a Pandoran day, if you genuinely want to go up against the Lance."

"I do", Hox said, even though his voice was still shaking.

"Good. Go then." Athena lit her sword, raised her shield and activated her cloak. The last Hox saw of her was a murderous gleam in her eyes.

Linda was starting the engine, when Hox came running over the dune. As much as he could run, with Jess' body, wrapped in a tarpaulin, in his arms.

"Now that's what I call timing", the driver commented. "What's with the stiff?"

Hox didn't deign this with a response. Instead, he carefully placed the body on the back of the car and lashed it tightly to the railings. Certain organics couldn't be stored in an SDU, so he'd have to get Jess to T-Bone-Junction the old-fashioned way.

"Was there anyone left or was it as I told you…?"

"Shut up. Drive." With the adrenaline rapidly going, Hox was feeling more and more wasted with every second, particularly on the psychological front. He dragged himself into the turret and put on his harness.

"I'm not a taxi. For the second time, what about the stiff?"

"Just drive, will you? Back to T-Bone?"

"You're extremely lucky this is just a slight detour for me. So, someone close to you, then?"

"Don't act as if you care!", Hox exploded. "You couldn't give a Rakk's ass about your last gunner dying right next to you, so pretty please don't pretend as if you have any interest in whatever happened in this town. Just. Drive. Off."

"Someone close to you", Linda concluded dispassionately and stepped down on it.