She was Aisha Clan-Clan and she would not cry. Not over a human stupid enough to get himself killed. Not over a boy even younger than herself, a child not even reached his fighting prime--though he fought--not even a warrior--though he was braver than half a thousand warriors she knew. Not when there wouldn't be even a body to taste the blood, to give her own blood to strengthen the spirit for the next life. No chance to pray he would be born Ctarl Ctarl in the new world, a general, bathed in endless glory.
Melfine was not Ctarl Ctarl. Melfina cried, without a sound, curled up in the armchair with tears running down her cheeks, not even knowing enough to hide them, until Aisha wanted to scratch her, to scream at the silly bitch to stop. If she were crying then it was real; Melfina didn't lie, didn't play jokes.
Gene might. But not now, not when it wasn't really Gene at all--same sight, same scent, but this man was silent when he should be shouting, and the pain flowing off him was thick as blood.
In combat one must overcome pain to survive, and Gene was a fighter; he might almost be Ctarl Ctarl in how he could lose and find himself in battle. When fighting, one turned all one's anger and pain against the enemy, and gained strength from it. Only there was no battle now, and all that rage and grief was twisted inward, the only enemy himself. When he fought, he had his own center, focused on the survival instinct, but outside of combat he had come to rely on another force to hold him steady.
That was a weakness, she knew, one of the great human flaws, to rely on someone outside of yourself, to pattern your life around something as fragile and uncertain as another life. It could give the illusion of strength--and she had almost fallen for it, almost begun to believe that a group together, relying on one another, reinforcing one another, could be stronger than any alone...but it was like a crowd of slaves chained at the neck, knock one down and the others topple.
She was Aisha Clan Clan, and she had no weaknesses.
She was almost glad when the men came, two stiff-spined humans in suits. It gave her reason to leave the silent room, to confront their visitors in the foyer. Of course she had no interest in what they had to say, and even less once they had said it. "We're investigating this morning's accident. We understand an employee of this...company...was involved?"
"He was on the ship. He'd been hired by the guy whose ship it was."
"What had he been hired for?" one man asked, and the other broke in, "What does this company do, exactly? You're Outlaw-operated, is that correct? Have you taken any other commissions recently?"
The questions continued in that vein, needling, feinting, never quite striking the heart but drawing a little more blood with every cut, until one of the men finally demanded, "How much experience did Mr. Hawking have with explosives?"
Aisha snarled, and it made up for the minutes of interrogation to see the two scramble back, composure lost before her slit-eyed glare. She didn't have to say anything more; they departed hastily, government paychecks and medical insurance not nearly high enough to warrant facing an angered Ctarl Ctarl.
When she returned to the living room Melfina had gone to the kitchen, but Gene hadn't moved from the floor. She didn't know if he had heard anything of her conversation with the human officials. He was still watching the screen, as if he expected the reporters to take back everything they had been saying since noon. As if any moment his partner would walk through the door and unmake the last hours.
Hope was such a human weakness, the conscious denial of sentient logic...ironic, she thought, that it could be the only way they stayed sane.
Melfina at last emerged from the kitchen bearing a tray of steaming bowls. She gave the largest serving of soup to Aisha, and set the second largest on the coffee table beside Gene. He shoved it away, hard enough to slop the broth over the bowl's rim, his eyes never leaving the news program.
"Please," Melfina said. "You haven't eaten all day."
He didn't even look at her.
"All right, that's it!" Aisha growled. Abandoning her own bowl, she snatched up the remote, switched off the screen and imposed herself between it and Gene's blank stare. Fists on her hips, she glowered down at him. "You can't fold like this. Sulking like a kitten who lost its toy pet. People die--"
"Aisha," Melfina whispered.
Aisha swung around to glare at her as well. "They do. It sucks, and it shouldn't have been him, but we all know this life is dangerous, and we all chose it, and we'll all die. He shouldn't have yet and I'd do anything to change that, but there's nothing to do. And Jim wouldn't want things to end here, he wouldn't."
Gene flinched, barely, but enough that Aisha knew he was listening. She knew she had to stay angry--give him an enemy, that necessary outside focus.
Besides, if she lost her rage, she didn't know if she would have anything left. "You know I'm right," she said.
Slowly Gene reached out, and slowly he slid his fingers around the soup bowl. "Good," Aisha exhorted, "Great, now eat--" He lifted the bowl as it weighed a thousand kilos, raised it to his mouth--"Good," Aisha said--
--And threw it, full-force, at the wall. The ceramic dashed to pieces against the metal window frame, soup splattering across the plaster to drip to the floor.
"Bad," Aisha sighed.
Gene stood abruptly. "I'm going out," he said. He brushed past her and Melfina without another word, stopping only to snatch his cloak and holster off the hook. The door snicked shut behind him.
Melfina sank to her knees, the tray and its remaining bowl heedlessly thrust aside. Faintly she said, "Maybe he'll get something to eat."
Something to drink was more likely, Aisha thought, but not aloud. She crossed to the window and crouched to pick up the broken shards of bowl, only to be startled by an explosion outside. Hissing with dismay, she bounded for the door, Melfina at her heels with her face white.
Gene's caster was in his hand, smoke leaking from the barrel, but it was not aimed at any of the shaken pedestrians on the street. Aisha tilted back her head and followed the gun's sights.
They had bought the sign the week they arrived on Nashua II--to Jim's protest, why not paint it ourselves? he demanded. But no, Gene insisted in turn, we need to make our presence known...and Jim finally relinquished a good chunk of their hard-earned cash to emblazon the roof above their door with a tacky neon billboard: "Starwind, Hawking, & Co." And while Aisha would never have permitted them to add her name to their ridiculous venture, somehow she always smiled when she read that "and Co."
Only now it was smashed apart, the top half fallen to the street, so that all that remained was the red word, "Hawking."
Aisha stared at Gene, trying to shout, "You idiot!", but her throat closed over when she met those empty eyes.
"In memoriam," he said, and then he disappeared into the crowd, leaving her and Melfina standing alone in the wreckage of their home.
Twilight Suzuka was hunting.
She had no specific target tonight. Within the first week of their arrival she had checked all the bounty listings at the local law enforcement office; by the second week she had captured two of the most wanted and had settled back with her reward. But the cost of living on Nashua II was high for a frontier world, and her funds were being quickly depleted. If she were elsewhere, a cheaper planet, or if she hadn't been dividing them among four others...
But it was her choice, as always. She lived as she wished, and didn't regret. And perhaps would admit late at night, in complete solitude, that she liked her present circumstances better than any before. Money or no money.
She needed it now, however. Besides, as she was less reluctant to confess, she enjoyed the hunt.
Of the remaining bounties, there were five preferred possibilities, any one of whom might be in the city at the present. So rather than set an ambush, she cruised the bad part of town, slipping through the shadows of bars and brothels, keeping one eye out for her prey, and the other watching her own back. The seamier sides of frontier worlds were always dangerous. It was what made them appealing. Every person she passed she studied briefly and thoroughly, looking for disguises and evaluating the threat in their eyes. So far she had spotted no sign of her possibilities, nor anyone with a menace to match her own, obvious in her carriage and the sheath at her side.
She was prepared for anything, but all the same when she glimpsed the familiar cloak whirling past she had to do a double take to verify it was him.
Odd. Gene usually stuck to the bars closer to their headquarters. Less distance to stumble home, and they were safer. Not that he minded that, but he knew how the others tended to worry. He had grown up a little in the time she had known him.
Perhaps a job had come up. She didn't reveal herself to him; he could handle it, she was sure. Gene Starwind was young, but he was still a man to be reckoned with--after all, he and his young partner had declared themselves Outlaws a year past, and were still alive.
Though tonight...she looked back at him, a single line furrowing her brow. His bearing was different, the force of his stride wrong. People scattered before him, lesser predators scrambling out of his way with all due haste, avoiding more than just his dynamic pace. There was a darkness around him, a second cloak she saw with more than her eyes, though she had never before seen Gene don it. The streets of Nashua II were shadowed, but the path his soul walked was blacker.
She could not mistake that way. As an assassin, as a warrior, she had witnessed too many others follow it. The path had but one end, and that was death.
This was not a regular job. No ordinary mission would drive him so hard--and to where, she didn't know. From what she could see now, his only aim seemed to be losing himself in the deepest shadows of the city's underworld. Perhaps relying on his innate instinct for finding trouble to guide him to whatever he sought.
Here, in this state, that instinct might serve him all too well.
She did not need to debate with herself. With contentment came responsibility. Hunt abandoned, Suzuka trailed new quarry.
He awoke in a silver room, blinded by the single white light above him. His jacket was gone, but the room was warm--more alarming was the loss of his gun and computer. On one wall he felt the outlines of a door, but nothing he did opened it.
Nor did exploring the room solve the mystery of where he was, or how he had gotten here. Sitting himself on the raised pallet, he planted his chin on his fists and carefully retraced his steps, beginning with the morning's failed attempt to rouse his partner.
After wasting a few minutes yelling at the lump on the couch, he had driven to the spaceport on his own to meet their new client, Paul Ramons. They had planned to rendezvous at the docking bay, but when he arrived there was no ship. Ramons had launched the night before, he learned, leaving a vid message. The man looked even paler than when he had called the previous evening, the sweat on his face visible even in the low-res clip. "S-sorry," he stammered, "but I couldn't stay, not after--I've left instructions for a shuttle, just show your ID. It's got autopilot. Just you, please come..."
Gene hadn't arrived by then, not that Jim had expected him to. He took the shuttle up alone, as requested--that service must have cost. Ramons, a wan, round, little man, met him at the airlock. "Thank you, I'm so sorry for the change..."
When they shook the man's hand was as moist as if he had been sucking on it. Jim surreptitiously wiped his own on his pants as he asked, "What's the trouble, Mr. Ramons?" He had been terribly unspecific on the phone.
"I--you see--I need protection!" the man blurted. "I've been targeted by--it's unbelievable--they already killed them both!" He trembled as if he were about to break down and cry.
"Who?" Jim asked in his most placating tone.
"My--my colleagues. We know--we knew...something, that was wanted, but we didn't know how badly, not until after our studies had started. But they knew, and we thought it was all right, god, we needed the grant so badly, we didn't know who they actually were until it was too late. And now it really is too late. Both of them--Abdul I heard about three days ago, but she--they didn't get her until last night, we couldn't be in touch but she had sent me one message, so I wouldn't worry...wouldn't worry..!"
"Let me get this straight," Jim said, piecing the babbled fragments together. "You and two of your buddies were targeted by someone, for something, and now both of your friends are dead?"
Ramons bobbed his head. Jim sighed. "Oh, man. I think I'm gonna need my partner on this one. Can I use your phone?" He had realized the shielding when he had docked. Ramons must have shelled out a pretty penny for the ship--which was more telling of his concern than all his jitters and stories. People died for all kinds of reasons and some folks always sound nervous, but even the most paranoid wouldn't throw around that kind of money for just a bump in the night.
It took him a while to convince the man to let him put through a call, and nearly as long for Gene to get off his lazy ass and answer it. Jim had expressed some disappointment, not having the time to fully call him to task, and had been in the middle of explaining the situation when...
Nothing. The rest of his memories were as blank as the silver walls around him. When he closed his eyes and concentrated, he thought he might recall a prick at the nape of his neck...but he might have only imagined it. Reaching up to his neck, he might have felt a tiny welt, but that might also have been his imagination.
There were no warning signs, but suddenly the door slid open. The man behind it was tall enough for his head to brush the top of the frame. His white cloak fell from his shoulders nearly to the floor, trimmed in gold to match the long, silver-streaked blond hair. Despite those strands, his face was still smooth and young-seeming, except for the faint scar slashing pink across one brow.
Too big for Jim to take him without any weapons. Instead he folded his arms, stared up at the newcomer resolutely and demanded, "Where am I?"
The man gazed down at him with what might have been pity in his dark eyes. "I'm afraid," he said in a low baritone, "that you're dead."
/~/~/~/~/~/
And it continues!
Thank you so much for the reviews, it's great to know people are reading! We're worrying some folks...tho' a couple of you might have figured it out, ne? Or maybe you only think you do...hehehe! We won't leave you hanging...too long, anyway. That is, if you want more...does anyone want more?