The Chains of Fate: Exiles of the Heart
By Chant99
DURING THE LAST FEW ARNS OF THE PEACEKEEPER / SCARRAN CONFLICT:
The pain in his guts was fading to numbing cold.
Ka'D'Argo knew he was mere moments away from finally dying. He clumsily checked the charge in the last weapon that John had left with him and found that he had depleted it's final magazine completely with the last combined Scarran and Charrid attack.
He chuckled groggily to himself. Even while fatally wounded, he had killed every last attacker in the last ten microns without sustaining so much as another scratch. Had there been any other witnesses, the battles he just fought would have been worthy of a Luxan campaign song. But there was none here to go on to write it.
It was just as well, he sighed weakly. His battle cry of "Who's your daddy!" as he killed both Scarran and Charrid alike, probably won't have translated well in to Luxan. He snickered and coughed up a wad of dark blood. He spat the wad into the dirt next to him.
"Frell it," he croaked. He liked the battle cry John had left him with anyway.
His only real regret was not having enough time to properly say goodbye to Chiana.
Something moved through the dust of the battleground and a Charrid helmet came into view. D'argo knew the next wave of attackers was upon him as more Charrids and a few Scarran came up behind the point man. The first Charrid saw the dying Luxan and pointed him out to the rest of his companions.
D'argo found he had one good snarl left inside him and voiced it while drawing his knife. "Who's your daddy!" he rasped out at his opponents while brandishing his blade. Not caring how pitiful he must have seemed lying there on the ground and waving it around.
The Charrids took note of the two empty pulse weapons discarded on the ground by the fallen warrior and concluded that they were out of ammo. A Scarran commander also took stock of the situation, and coming to the same conclusion, order his men to walk in and finish the Luxan.
Laughing at the Luxan's bravado, a few of the Charrids raised their rifles and took a few steps close to D'argo to finish him off. The warrior grit his teeth and clutched his only weapon, uttering curses at the Charrids possible ancestors and daring them to get closer to him.
The Charrids had found the injured Luxan so entertaining that they failed to notice the numerous shadows behind and to the sides of them come to life, and flow fluidly across the hazy battle field toward them.
D'argo caught the shades right away from his half prone position, and for a microt his heart leaped with the thought his friends had come back to fight one last time besides him.
A bone-chilling song of finely honed metal being unsheathed told the warrior that it wasn't his comrades coming back for him. The first hint the Charrids had of anything amiss was the sound of dying Scarrans at their rear. They turned almost as one unit, but it was too late, the black-garbed figures were among them in a flash and they too began to shriek and die.
D'argo watched in fogged astonishment. He caught quick glimpses of gunmetal armor and swirling black cloaks and knew that an element of Black Syndicate Enforcers – Shrikes – had joined the fighting.
But why were they killing Charrids and Scarrans, he asked himself? Shrikes were assassin members of a Scarran criminal underworld. There's no explanation why they would be slaughtering Scarrans and Charrids.
Almost before it started, the attack was over and the last Charrid fell to the ground headless, having been decapitated by the brace blades of one of the assassins. In the background, a number of cloaked figures went from body to body to ensure they were truly dead. Nearby, a group of Shrikes meet and appeared to be having a discussion. Several times they turned in his direction and D'argo knew he was the subject of the conversation. The assassin's wore the armored battle helmets that covered their entire heads and face, leaving only a pair of slightly glowing eyes lens as any noticeable feature. The effect left the Enforcers looking as if some hezmana-spawned creatures were regarding him with eyes of fire. Dargo spat another glob of clotting blood onto the ground beside him, partly because it was near choking him, and partly in contempt because the creatures were a too plain reminder of the murderous Berret who had been with Moya's crew for a short chaotic time.
The warrior could hear no voices coming from the group, so he assumed the assassins were using some sort of comm system to communicate securely between themselves.
Black forms drifted in and out of the scene, making it hard for D'argo to count how many Shrikes there actually were around him. The only ones that he could be sure about were the four standing close by having their powwow. Occasionally one or another would raise an armor covered arm and wave or point at the prone Luxan. D'argo was sure they were talking about what to do with him, and he was also sure that a majority of the discussion was on whether or not to just kill him.
"Frell you, you bastards…" D'argo rasped out in barely a whisper, "I'm frelling dying anyway. Keep talking and by the time you feniks make up your minds… I'll be gone and cold."
He wasn't sure if the Shrikes could hear him or just chose to ignore him for the moment, but the defiance made him feel better.
Finally two of the quartet of assassins who seemed to be in charge for the most part, appeared to have bent the others to their will, and the other pair abruptly departed off in different directions. He hadn't noticed it, but during that short time his attention was on the smaller group of Enforcers, the other Shrikes that were in the background had also faded off and were now unseen.
The tallest Shrike turned and looked upon the Luxan with red electronic eyes. D'argo tried to gripped his knife once more, knowing that it would be less than useless against a fully armored Enforcer, but he'd be damned if he wasn't going to die without a weapon in his hand. The big warrior cursed, as he found that his hand no longer had the strength to hold the knife properly.
The humanoid assassins both strode over toward him and D'argo prepared to die. When they were close enough to him the smaller Shrike bend at its knees and knelt down to him. It watched him silently with those red glowing visor eyes, tilting its head back and forth slightly as if studying him.
D'argo growled another weak curse in Luxan and spat at the Shrike.
The Enforcer easily avoided the spittle by nonchalantly twisting out of its path. Unperturbed, the assassin reached out and removed the knife from the warrior's limp fingers and placed it on the ground next to him.
"Go…ahead… and… kill me," D'argo gasped out. "I'm dying… anyway. You're… too… late… you… frell-frelling… bas-tard!"
Unexpectedly, the Shrike did something unseen and the red light from its visor died. An instant later the visor section of the helmet snapped upward revealing humanoid-looking eyes behind it.
"You're not dead yet, Luxan," the Enforcer said in a low dry tone that was obviously female. With the lower part of the face plate still covering the female assassin's jaw and mouth, D'argo couldn't tell if the Shrike's slightly muffled voice had made the statement a question or an observation.
D'argo chose not to reply to his enemy, letting his silence speak his racial contempt for Syndicate assassins.
She turned slightly to regard the bigger assassin standing behind her.
"This one and his group fit the description he had given us," the female Shrike said. Dargo could hear the emphasis on the pronoun 'he' in her comment. The larger Enforcer merely tilted its head in silent accord with the statement. She turned her eyes back to the dying warrior. "Then we must try, he would expect that of us. Give it to him," she ordered.
The second Shrike took a pace forward and then held up its right forearm. D'argo expected to see the twin serrated blades he knew the gauntlet brace contained to spring outward over the top of the assassin's fist. Instead a pair of needle-like rods slid out from the brace just under the Shrike's wrist.
The Luxan knew immediately that it was a device for injecting something.
"You're going to use poison to kill me?" he asked unbelievingly, his voice momentarily becoming stronger in his amazement. "You… you… frelling… Shrikes… are pitiful," he spat, "Go ahead… you coward… do… your frelling… worse."
The Shrike's head titled to one side as if amused, its cold electronic eyes gave it a hint of demonic mirth, and D'argo imagined if he could have seen the assassin's features behind the armored mask, it might have been smiling in an equally malevolent way to match the hezmana fire glow of the visor lens.
D'argo had no reason to believe the pair had nothing but ill intentions for him.
"Do it!" the Luxan barked out.
The Shrike rammed the duel spikes in just below D'argo's collarbone. The Luxan grit his teeth determined not to give the assassin the satisfaction of hearing him cry out as the poison killed him.
His lips parted and the scream escaped anyway. Whatever the assassin was pumping into him burned like the very fires of hezmana itself.
The last view D'argo had before all went dark was of the female Shrike's now expressionless eyes staring down at him from what now appeared to the Luxan as a great height.
THREE QUARTERS OF A CYCLE LATER:
Crichton arrived at the Center Chamber just in time to see another expensive figurine shatter against a bulkhead. The ceramic shards tinkled to the deck to join the scattered ruminates of several other statuette victims. Chiana's wordless scream filled his ears as she seized another statue and sent it hurling at a bulkhead on the opposite side of the chamber.
It was the Nebari's screams that had brought him on the run in the first place. He expected to find the young girl being attacked by an up till then, undetected intruder. Instead she was alone in the mess hall.
The second pottery missile met the same finish as the others against the unyielding walls of the Leviathan.
"Yo, Pip!" he called as she turned and grabbed up the next figure in line. "What the hell are you doing?"
Chiana whirled on him, almost looking as if she might throw the next piece in her hand at him. Instead she smashed it off the massive table in the center of the room.
Her head jerked wildly as she looked at her crewmate.
"I'm breaking things… what the frell does it look like," she responded irritably.
"I can see that," John replied, now realizing that the gray girl had entered into one of her blacker destructive moods that had been becoming more regular in the last half-cycle. "But I wish you'd stop. You're making enough noise to wake the baby."
"I don't care," she said. Two more figurines left the table and shattered against the same bulkhead an instant later.
The human sighed. Chiana seemed to be going down hill at hetch-seven since D'argo died, and there was nothing anyone aboard Moya could do to help the girl. Chiana was like a little sister to him and Crichton loved her deeply in that way. But Aeryn and their son, D'argo, needed him and most of his time; so there was little left he could spare for the hurting girl. It was at time like this he really missed Zhaan's presence on board.
"I thought those statues were expensive… and a gift from that guy, Lame-o?" he asked, trying to make her focus on something else besides smashing things.
"Loremos," she corrected. "And they are," she confirmed.
Another statuette met its end under her boot heel after she dropped it on the deck.
"Then why are you trashing them?" he wanted to know. It wasn't like the thief to treat items she could turn a quick credit on like that, no matter how moody she became in his prior experience.
"Because… I'm sick of it all!" she told him.
"Sick of what?" he asked.
There were several more figurines left on the counter. Chiana violently whipped her hand through them, sending them flying to bust against walls, table, and deck as they hit with impressive force.
"Everything!" she snapped as she came to a crouch in front of Crichton, looking animalistic. "Every-frelling-thing!" she repeated as she twisted her face up closer to his.
"Look, Pip…" he tried to soothe.
"NO!" the Nebari barked. "No, Crichton. I don't want to hear it. Don't try and tell me that dren about how its all gonna be alright. Don't try and sell me that pipe-dream anymore."
"Chiana…" John could only say, as he was face-to-face with her pain.
"It's not alright. Its never gonna be alright, Crichton," Chiana continued as if he hadn't said anything to interrupt her. "I… I lose everything… everyone I care about… there's nothing! Nerri's gone – my own brother won't let me find him. Zhaan's gone… Berret's gone… and now D'argo's dead." She looked up at him with near pleading eyes. "What do I have, John? What do I have?"
"Little girl… it's not all that bad," he answered in a near whisper.
"Nothing!" the gray girl countered. "I… have… nothing." The look in her eyes became slightly more stable as she spoke her next thoughts. "You know… there was one time I wanted you. But then I saw that you and Aeryn belonged together… and I saw that was the right thing. And I told myself, one day that will be me and somebody. One day, I'll be happy like that."
"You will," John assured her.
Chiana merely shook her head slightly. "No… not for me. I'm cursed, Crichton. I thought I'd found it with D'argo that first time, but I frelled it up. Then I thought after meeting Berret that I was getting closer. It was so good to feel the way I did. Someone did miraculous things because of me as a person, not for my body or because I tricked them. I grieved so much when I thought he'd died so I could get away, but at the same time… I was… a part of me was 'thrilled'… that another person thought me worthy enough to lay down their life for me. Is that wrong… Is that… evil, to feel that way?"
John shook his head. "No, Pip. It just means part of him saw the real you. The good part of you we all see and love."
"Then why do I always lose?" she asked. "When D'argo and I got back together, I swore I would do right this time. I wouldn't frell up my second chance with him. Even when we thought we lost you and Aeryn… and I was blind, I still never gave up. Then Berret turned up alive and I got my sight back, I thought it was a sign – everything was gonna be okay. Even though 'Ret had changed, I was sure then that I could help him. I could make everything fine again… because I was getting closer to the happy life I wanted.
"Then we got Aeryn and you back and it was almost perfect. I just had to help Retty beat what the Syndicate did to him, that was it… but then he went… and did what he did…" she gave a loud sniff as she went on, her eyes began to water despite her effort to hold back the tears that had been forming there.
"Then the Scarrans took D'argo from me… and left me with … nothing."
"You still have us," the human told her.
The Nebari girl shook her head once more.
"It's not enough, John… its just not enough."
"Chiana," Crichton began, "I know it's been a lot. I know what you must have went through during that time we had all left Moya…"
Her wild-mane of white hair blurred as her head suddenly snapped around on him, her eyes and expression turned emotionless in an instant and froze the thought in his mind before he could complete it.
"No…" she said with eerie calmness. "No, you can't know. Nobody can know! No one here… can understand what my life has become. Nobody can see just what a cluster-frell my dreams have turned into!"
Her head tilted curiously as if she were seeing the human for the first time in her life. Crichton suddenly had the feeling he was standing in the Center Chamber with a complete stranger.
"That's what I'm sick of," she continued in that oddly even monotone. "I'm sick of seeing everyone else find some part of happiness… while fate brings up my hopes, and then crushes them. I can't watch this anymore – I can't sit in the corner and watch you and Aeryn raise your family. I can't watch Rygel get his family and throne back again while D'argo lays dead and cold. I can't watch… I won't watch anymore."
She had begun to back away from him toward the chamber access way as she had spoken. John realized she meant this last torrent as her parting comment as she turned away.
"What are you going to do, Chiana?" he found himself asking to the girl's back.
She paused for a microt at the door, turning her head just enough so he could make out her profile.
"I'm getting off at the next commerce planet," she supplied, still in that strange tone. "I'm leaving Moya," she finished then step out the door.
Crichton involuntarily shuddered at the lack of color in the gray girl's voice. For an instant, she reminded him of the dead Shrike she had so vainly wanted to help.
Corporal Haze shoveled the last of his mid-day meal into his mouth and at the same time tried not to chuckle out loud at the off-color joke his teammate, Corporal AcRooks, had just finished telling him as they sat outside the field mess tent.
The story about the drunken Luxan and the Sheyang tralk had been a good one, so he forced the last mouthful of slop the military called food down, and let the belly laugh he was holding back find it's way out.
"Aye, AcR… that was a good," Haze finally said. "I didn't know whether to puke out my lunch or dren my pants!"
"Should have done both and saved yourself a trip to the latrine in half an arn," his comrade replied.
"Make that an arn," put in Haze with a pat of his now content belly. "Its not often ground-pounders like us get a whole day off to lay around the firebase. Man's gotta take his leisure time where he can in this fenik's army."
"Well… some of us enjoy the time off the front lines," AcRooks replied distractedly. Haze followed his friend's gaze and saw that the other man's attention on another nearby soldier. Haze recognized immediately who it was and frowned.
"Ugh… why you wasting your free time thinkin' on him?" he asked.
AcRooks gave him a half shrug. "There just something off about that unit scout," he told the other Corporal, for what must have been the hundredth time by the other man's count.
Haze replied by merely shaking his head.
"Well, you have to be 'off' to want to spend most of your time out in front of a combat unit instead of inside it where there's at least some protection from enemy fire."
"That's just it," he said as he watched the subject of their discussion eat his own meal, off by himself and away from the rest of the soldiers. "He seems to like it that way… ain't natural."
Haze paused a few microts to dig in one pocket and find a wrapped Chroot stick. He placed the stick between his lips and lit it, blowing out a lungful of the harsh smoke as he too found himself regarding the other man across from them.
"Ain't nothing natural about that one," he agreed when he finally spoke. "Bastard moves like a ghost in the field… and says less. Gives me a case of the j'Ell-hebbers. What did he say his name was again?"
"Tessen Korr," AcRooks supplied.
"Hum…" the other hummed in thought. "Isn't that Scarran?" he asked his better-educated friend a moment later.
The other half-shook his head with his answer. "Not a proper Scarran name… but its close to ' tes Zen Caor' in Scarran."
"What's it mean if it's not a name?"
"Like a pronoun of sorts for a nonentity… would mean 'nobody' or 'no one' in a rough translation."
"Think it's a joke?" Haze asked him next.
AcRooks shrugged again. "Who knows? Most of the mercs fighting in this frelling war are using fake names. The ruling caste doesn't care as long as the rebels keep catching pulse bolts."
"Frelling strange," Haze with a nod at the scout.
"No argument there," said the other. "Do you see the way he eats after a heavy engagement? Enough for five grunts the size of Luxans. I think he likes the fighting… like some men like to frell a good tralk."
Haze slowly nodded his head once more and narrowed his eyes as something occurred to him.
"I heard from a few marines in 'B' company that he took out five reb sentries one night without a sound. After they cleared out the main rebel cell, they found the guards dead at their posts without a single bleeding wound on the lot of them. Four broken necks and one shattered skull… no pulse burns, no blade wounds… all done with bare hands."
"Frelling strange…" added AcRooks.
"Never much paid him any mind until you started obsessing on him," Haze admitted. "Don't think I've ever seen him smile. Doesn't associate with any other ground-pounders while off the chron. Hardly see him while on patrol… just takes that odd sniper rifle of his and goes. Wouldn't know he was out there if it weren't for the dead rebs we run across. Don't think anyone knows what his kill count is, not even the high-collars back at command."
Haze's tongue worked around his teeth for a moment, then he spat a ruminate of his meal out onto the ground before him. "You ever see him make use of a pleasure slave anytime?" he inquired.
AcRooks simply shook his head in the negative.
"Keeps to himself as far as I or anyone else I talked to knows," he supplied further.
"A combat grunt needs sex during wartime," Haze said absently. "Relieves the stress a soldier builds up fighting for weekens at a time. Keeps a man sharp and easy when there's killing to be done. Man go crazy without that sort of release every so often."
"Whole reason for stocking the firebases with pleasure slaves for the men," AcRooks agreed.
"A man always wanting to be alone, choosing to fight alone, not using the slaves… maybe he already is crazy?" Haze thought out loud.
"That's been my point all along," the other Corporal said. "Have you ever taken a close look at his eyes, I mean a real close look?" Haze shook his head in answer. "They're dead," AcRooks went on, "Dead like, I mean no spark of life at all. Uvac'ii over in third company swore to me that one night on ambush patrol he ran into that scout on the trail… and that his eyes looked like they were on fire or something.
"Uvac'ii likes his Raslek too much," Haze retorted.
"Have you ever seen him packing night vision occulars when he's been assigned to scout for our unit? I haven't."
Haze turned and regarded him with an upraised eyebrow and then frowned deeply. "Now you'll have me spending all my free time thinking about that silly-eema nurfer," he spat at the other.
"Just ain't natural," AcRooks replied, looking back over to the man called Tessen.
"Yeah…" Haze followed a microt later, his eyes going to the same place. "… frelling strange."
The man calling himself Tessen Korr drained his kit mug of the weak tea the mess tent had served with and set it on the ground besides the rock he had chosen for a seat while he ate.
He went back to his half-finished plate and had just lifted the fork to his mouth when the civilian server approached him.
"Refill your cup for you, scout?" asked a young female voice.
Tessen idly glanced up for a microt to see young Nebari/Sebacean half-breed standing beside him with a tea canister. He absently waved for her to refill the mug and dismissed her from further thought. The firebase was filled support personal, many of which were of mixed races. It wasn't uncommon for them to gravitate to such backwater worlds to find wherever work or life they could… even if it was working in a war zone. Many races in the Territories did not tolerate half-breeds in their societies.
The girl had just finished filling his mug and was setting it down very carefully by his side again when a four-man artillery squad happened by. The young men had been obviously enjoying their off duty time and had gotten into the Raslek and Fillip nectar supplies early that day.
The group was rather noisy and creating quite a disturbance was they half marched, half staggered through the camp.
One of the men spied the young Nebari half-breed as she turned to move on with her camp duties.
He immediately slapped the nearest other man in the party across the chest to get his attention. The blow nearly brought the other man to the point of returning the favor; until he saw what the first man had intended him to see. The offended party immediately forgot his grievance once he glimpsed the female also.
"Now that… is what I call a tralk!" the first man said out loud, making the rest of the unit pull up short and stop with the first pair.
"That's a frelling lot better than that sorry lot of pleasure tramps we normally get," said the second soldier.
"Half Nebari too," said a third, "You know what they say about Nebari girls."
The squad immediately changed direction to head the girl off; she had only taken several steps away from the scout before they had her surrounded.
"Hey, what's your hurry?" the first artillery officer asked the nervous server after they had blocked her in.
"Please, sir… let me pass," the girl said. "I… I have my job, my duty to see that all the troops are being fed." She looked from one to the other of the leering faces, growing more frightened by the microt.
"What happens if we have some 'other duty' for you to perform?" asked one.
"Like back at our barracks… in our bedrolls," another added with a malevolent sneer.
The young girl's dark eyes flew wide open as she realized the situation and what the drunken men had in mind for her.
"Please… I'm just a server. My brother and I work in the kitchens," she explained rapidly. "I'm not a pleasure slave!"
"You're what we say you are, bitch," the first man told her with growing danger in his voice. The other men in his group chuckled as the girl tried to back away, but only ran up against one of the other men behind her. She yelped out loud with surprise as a hand found her undefended backside and pinched.
"Please!" she cried out again, almost in a blind panic now. "I'm just only sixteen-cycles-old!" she pleaded.
"Well then… you shouldn't have too many bad habits we have to break," someone replied with a laugh.
"Leave her alone."
The voice had been low and out of place within the squad. All four men looked back and forth at each other, attempting to determine which of them had uttered the sentence. The leader of the group, the first man to spy the grayish-skinned girl, shook off his moment of bewilderment and reached for the girl's arm to attempt to drag her off and back to their quarters.
"I said to leave her alone," came the voice again.
This time the whole unit pinpointed the source of the dry sounding demand. They turned to look over at the scout, still seated on his rock, as he casually scrapped the last of the food from his plate.
The first artilleryman inspected the scout and a sneer of contempt lit his face a moment later.
"You're not talking to us? Are you, you frelling merc scum?" he asked.
The scout took his time, and finished the last of his second mug of tea before setting it down and answering.
"I don't see anyone else molesting a server girl, eema-hole."
The leader of the unit was almost taken aback by the response. His jaw worked for a microt or two as his anger built.
"You don't know your place, scout. I'm regular army and I out-rank you. I can have you flogged for insubordination, even though you're a mercenary fenik," the squad leader warned.
Tessen simply sat, still holding his now empty kit plate in one hand, while regarding the man with a look of growing boredom on his face. His tongue found a piece of food stuck to his teeth and he worked it out and then spat it on the ground before him. Mess food always seemed to have tough un-chewable parts not matter what it was suppose to be. His uninterested gaze looked up and settle back on the artilleryman.
The other grinned, taking the scout's silence to mean he had been subjugated.
"I don't think we need to bother command with a tribunal for insubordination," he said as he looked at the others in his unit for approval. "I think we can just dispense some military justice here and now." The others all nodded and voiced their agreement. He turned back toward Tessen and smiled. He gave the girl's arm a jerk and she near whimpered as she looked back and forth between the artillery squad and the scout she briefly hoped would get her out of the situation.
"We're going to beat the living dren out of you, nurfer…just so you'll be sure to know your place next time you're around real soldiers… and because it'll be fun," the leader told him. "Then we're going to take this little half-breed back to our bivouac and have ourselves a little frell party."
He took another step forward and smiled wickedly at the scout.
"What do you think about that?" he asked.
The scout looked off to one side as if giving the matter serious thought and then turned back with a slight nod to himself. A spit microt later, the scout's metal kit plate struck the artilleryman dead center in the forehead with a resounding smack. The other three men and the serving girl all stood stunned as the squad leader fell to the ground unconscious. None of them had seen the scout move, only the flying disc his plate had become striking its target.
The girl scrambled a short distance away as the scout slowly rose to his feet. He rolled his neck leisurely from side-to-side and then did the same with his arms and shoulders to loosen up his muscles.
The remaining artillerymen looked repeatedly at their fallen comrade and then at the scout.
The single man then gave them a cold grin, the first that any person in the camp had ever seen him exhibit.
What he said next was in a tone that even chilled the half-Nebari girl's blood.
"Let's play."