The industrial district is about as bland as it gets. Manufactories supervised by tech priests, foundries, conveyer belts, power plants, chimneys and smoke stacks and other synonyms fill the landscape for three kilometers, all of it fenced in, all of it outside of PDF jurisdiction. They still send outdated dropships to belch out panicked troops on every landing pad and in every open space available. I watch all of it happen from one of the shortest smoke stacks.
My fingers are strong enough to dig into the duracrete and hold me there, on the edge of the smog ceiling. A hundred soldiers are devoted to finding and flushing me out. One last fatwheel rolling in should bring the count to a hundred and twenty.
It's the only land vehicle allowed in here, so I keep an eye on it. Troops pounce out of it and secure the area, as expected, but two individual walk out after them, a civilian and a sergeant. I am two hundred meters away, but I can clearly see all of them. The civilian has a bag on his head and wears a standard jumpsuit, could be anyone.
Could be someone like me, I'm most likely not the only one… The sergeant tears the bag off.
Looks like me, but older and dumber. My dad.
The sergeant raises his vox caster and speaks on every loudspeaker in the area. "Jan Rey! This is the Planetary Defence Force, you are suspected of treason and murder, surrender and we will grant you a fair trial, resist and we will kill you and any known associate, starting with your father!"
Well, he's straight to the point, isn't he? My father gave me nothing, gave my mother one thing; me. I owe him nothing but a boot in the throat. Couldn't even run away on us, just had to remind us over and over of how great a priest he would have been without us ruining his plans. Haven't talked to the man since mom died.
Of course, the sergeant wants my dad to sweet talk me into coming out. The man's voice is hoarse but sober. "Jan, I know I've not always done what's best for you and your mother…"
You mean breaking my arm when I was six, hitting her at least once a week, drinking and smoking most of our income and getting yourself caught by the PDF? Yeah, I see where you're going with this.
"But if you will listen to one advice, grant your father one wish…" I've got ten credits on it being forgiveness… Who wants to take me up on it? "Never surrender."
What? The sergeant goes to rip the vox caster from dad's hand, but the old drunkard punches him straight to fairy-unicorn-land, then, hunched over the caster as PDF troopers charge him, he shouts, "Never give up, never become like me!" He gets tackled to the ground and quickly overwhelmed, but keeps roaring into the coms device, "She fought until the end for you! She died for you! We love you, Jan!"
The sergeant orders his men to move aside and shoots the sobbing old man right in the head, silencing him for good.
I jump off. Concrete shatters all around me. I didn't just knock a dent into the smoke stack; it's going down, all of it, crumbling on itself like a sand castle. The building I land on, halfway to the fatwheel, loses three stories worth of windows when I land and another two when I jump. Three of its floors collapse behind me, but I couldn't care less.
A dropship plants itself squarely in my face midflight. Its machine guns tearing my flesh apart and slowing me down with every hit. I just barely makes it onto the gunner's canopy. The man's screaming and so am I, we both sound like foxes being skinned alive, only he has to catch his breath, whereas I don't. Still roaring at the top of my endless lungs, I punch through the bulletproof glass and yank the man out through the fist-shaped hole.
I don't even go after the pilot, instead punching the skak out of the engines before running along the tail and jumping off right onto the fatwheel's troop bay.
The first to die is the sergeant. I pounce right onto his shoulders and dig my thumbs in his eyes until his cheekbones are in his ears, then I consume all of his biomass to replace what's been lost to the twenty troopers lighting me up nonstop for ten seconds now.
I learn that he's not in charge, a woman called Olenk is, she ordered my father captured and used as bait. She's going to die.
Shielding my eyes with one hand, I stroll up to a cluster of terrified troopers and grab the one too stupid to run off. I don't break his gun, I rip out his arms. "Where's Olenk?" I ask the corpse, a moment before realizing I killed this poor guy instantly.
I want to kill them all. Probably what they were expecting, but what did they ever do to me?
Well, they won't stop peppering me with crude detachable sabot ammunition, but that's akin to killing someone for splashing you with a garden hose.
I have not grudge against them and no reason to fight the PDF on their terms. We're done here.
They try to cut off my retreat, I hear it on the radio I don't recall picking up, but they expect me to flee by land. Whereas I just stroll up to the water purification complex, one of thousands I'll bet, close the door behind me and rip open a manhole cover marked INSPECTORS AND ADEPTS ONLY.
Water's low, I can't see much… Somethin drips off my face and falls into the sludge. Droplets of clear liquid, not blood.
I'm not crying… I'm not! Shut up.
I drop down the storm drain or whatever that is and catch myself thinking that, for about thirty seconds today, I had a father.
