Chapter 3
As Manne and Karath approached the Oberon-Vega jump-point, it seemed the weight of the universe was on them both. Neither had said anything, for the recent events had left them physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. Manne quietly focused on the preparations that needed to be made for the jump, as he had done countless times before, and though his attention leaned towards ship navigation, inside his mind, he was cycling through the destinations of where this new road was going to take he and Karath, both.
He finally resigned to the idea that this had to happen eventually. How could he keep the truth away from Karath, forever? It wouldn't be fair, he thought, he'd never be able to forgive himself. What right did he have to keep a piece of who she was away from her? She didn't belong to him, she was her own person, and as such, deserved this fragment of her being, regardless of what it would turn her into. The innocence in which he kept her shrouded was more for himself than it was for her, and it wasn't until he uncovered the truth to her, that he was able to see that himself.
Across the universe, in the co-pilot's chair, Karath's swirling mass of thoughts took a different shape and vector.
Growing up, Manne used to tell her fairy tales from the ancient cultures of the distant human homeworld of Earth. The morals, the lessons, the takeaways of these stories had infiltrated her, leaving traces of human thought littered around her mind. She was also a tevarin, and as such, she had a stern disposition towards the upholding of honor. To them, a long life was second to an honorable one, however short. They had lived that way on their planet for thousands of years before becoming space-faring, and it often showed itself as an innate quality. She was torn, the stability of her grasp on reality, disrupted. Her choices were obvious: Revenge or nothing. Her past would haunt her forever if she did nothing, but she was afraid of whom, or what, she'd become if she sought revenge. The warnings of ancient human voices rang loud in her mind, and she wondered if raw desire would ring louder, and if so, would she truly achieve freedom, or lose it?
They navigated the jump-point and came out in relief, for no matter how many of them one navigated, they never got any safer, the consequences were never less grave.
It wasn't long before they were entering the atmosphere of Vega III.
"Selene," Manne said. "Been a while."
"Looks like there are more buildings than I remember," Karath replied. They were in a bigger city now than they were the last time they visited, but Manne didn't mention it: He was happy that she was taking interest in that kind of conversation. It showed some kind of return—or an attempt at least—to stability. Willingness and time can be an effective pair.
They docked down in a quiet zone right outside the inner city, along the water, where it was cheaper to park but close enough to blend into the population. Before he shut down the ship, Manne put in his orders for repairs and replacement batteries, rations, the like, and sighed awkward relief to be back on soil. It always felt weird to him at first, but growing up on it, he'd admit to himself that he lied whenever he told an ex-girlfriend that his soul belonged in the dark frontier of space: He actually loved being on the ground.
Eager workers in the hangar eyed them up and down, a few more nosey ones taking too much interest in their ship and their identities. Some offered their services and, more importantly, their machines, to help unload their treasures. They'd seen many scrappers come this way, and knew that an encounter with a great scrapper was rare but lucrative.
It wasn't long before they were on the road in a cargo truck, making their rounds about the buyers in the city. Manne followed his mobi and was busy dealing with the hectic ant lines that were the deep urban traffic lanes.
Karath sat passenger, with her head resting on her hand, staring out at the busy of the city; she started to wonder at the world she saw. Every single one of these souls had a story: a beginning, an ending; ups and downs; she saw them all and wondered how the web of their lives shook when they died, or someone close to them did, or something tragic happened to them. She stared at people's faces and asked herself what they did behind closed doors and if anybody would ever find out, if someone she'd just seen knew someone who had something to do with her mother's death, with anyone's death.
She was beginning to make up her mind, then, that no matter where this "T" was, this tevarin who'd decided that her mother's life was worth nothing, that if she came across him, she'd make him regret—regret, and remember, for maybe it was in the terror of our memories, that when we're forced to think about the wrongs we've made, we are then forced to live through the effects of those actions, that we're put on the opposite end to receive an imposition of free will, that which we had given out so freely.
There were so many people in this system that if you had something, you could find someone who wanted it, and if you wanted something, you could find someone who had it. Manne and Karath managed to empty out half their truck by the end of the day, and headed back to the dock to turn in for the night at a nearby hotel.
The two were so busy that there wasn't time for many words between them. Manne took it as Karath's way of trying to move on from what she'd learned, as he knew the value of a hard-earned workday in regards to helping one cope with a recent life event. He remembered when he dealt with the stress of accepting the unforeseen, that hard work and time mixed to cement the unstable rocky turmoil that he used to call his life.
For Karath it was different. By the time she laid her head down on that silk-laden pillow, in that lush, two bedroom suite—the kind Manne liked to stay in the first day back on dirt from a successful scrap run—she had already decided her purpose. The rush of revenge had come and gone, and what remained was quiet determination.
She laid there, wide awake, listening to the muffled sounds of the street and Manne's grumblings next door, and stared up at the ceiling blind to the faint light shining in her eyes through the curtained window. She was emotionless, still, like the frame of a clock, the cogs ticking away, counting down to some inevitability. Part of her wished she could turn back time, when she felt like the only cares she had were what scrap she was going to find or repair next, when she learned from Manne how to pilot ships, and listened to his stories. The mystery of her identity was always in the back of her mind, but they might as well have been far off into the galaxy, for she lived for the day to day. There was never a time where she worried too much about what the future might bring her, no malevolence, just a shining star of curiosity, and a hopeful yearning for some sense of family.
Things were more complicated now. She stared up at the ceiling for hours driving herself mad, wondering at who this tevarin was, how she was going to find him, and in part wishing to go back to simpler times.
She frustratingly exhaled and climbed out of bed. Fresh, non-recycled air might clear the head, she thought, and with that she suited up and slipped out of the hotel, unnoticed, sliding through the shadows like Manne had taught her to.
A few star systems away, on the 5th planet of Nul, Ashana, figures moved through shadow not unlike Karath. Their moves were more sinister, though, and the darkness seemed to swirl around them as they passed, disturbing the constant dust and smoke that pervaded the outdoor hallways of Olympus, the battlecruiser city. This smoke and dust knew the secrets of all those who lived or conducted business here, no matter how much time they spent living out of sight. It shifted aside as silhouettes waded past them, and filled in behind as soon as they did and patted their backs.
It curiously followed a man who limped down shaded corridors, past tweaked out Maze addicts and SLAMjunkies, until he got to a secluded metal wall in the lower corners of the city. He leaned against it for a moment watching all ways around him before knocking against it: Two hard, three quick, and one final hard one to open it up. Smoke filled the corridor, and when it dissipated, he and the door were gone.
Inside, he stood half in shadow, half in a blood-red pool of glow, as he nodded up at a security gun camera mounted up above the door, aiming directly at his chest and cocked, ready to fire. The man flinched underneath his coat as the gun's safety clicked on, and he let out a sigh of slight relief as the doors in front of him slid apart, unveiling a long dark passageway leading deeper into one of Olympus' sub-chambers. He stepped quickly out of the security room, for he knew that each time he went through it was a blessing: A shady pirate's closest friends can be his quickest enemies.
It was a type of dwelling rarely seen in Olympus—they were expensive to maintain; more importantly, they were commissioned to be under the radar, and only long-standing pirate gangs would even have a chance to hole themselves up so deep in the Olympus.
This particular one was run by a gang specializing in slavery. From deep asteroid miners to the comfort girls in casinos, it seemed that they had slaves from almost every walk of life.
This casino also served as the base of operations for the gang in this sector of the galaxy. Inside, dim lights stalked gamblers from above and caressed scant-clad arm-candy of all races hugged up against them, laughing at every joke, and lending words of support when they lost their money on the table, hoping to get what money they had left in their pockets so they could spend it on more Neon.
Towards the back of the casino, armed tevarins guarded a red velvet carpet-lain stairwell. The limping man moved towards them and paused when they sneered back.
"I got a message for the boss," he yelled over the music.
The guard on the right lowered his energy rifle and stuck out his hand, smiling. "You know the rules, Peg," he gloated.
"I got a message for the boss," he stressed. "I ain't borrowin' credits."
"And I got an empty hand and a rifle, which one you rather deal with?"
Peg mumbled under his breath and reached into his coat, pulling out a newer model electronic Stim and an array of different flavored liquids, handing them over. The guards approved of his payment and chuckled, admiring the e-Stim as he passed, debating who would try it first.
Peg limped his way up the stairs and paused in front of a pair of large double doors covered in red velvet to take a deep breath. A massive, golden emblem depicting a curved, downward-pointing knife, reading as the letter "t", was mounted in the center of the doors. Peg gripped the point of the golden knife on the right door, twisting it like a handle, and limped inside.
The suite was large, pentagonal, complete with lounge couches lined with animal fur, and a bar with unmarked, crystal vases. Decorated along the room's five walls were loaded guns ranging from collector handguns to high-end energy rifles, mounted against framed wallscreens which depicted various charming sceneries from planet surfaces across the galaxy. Peg stood in awe of the room: To witness it from the inside was rare, and everytime he did it was more impressive than the last. His eyes wandered lustfully around the room before finally realizing its eerie stillness.
In all his admiration, his eyes had passed over a tevarin who stood still to his left, large, engraved high-carbon blade in hand, menacingly staring down his jade-black beak at him. When his eyes passed over him again, he fully realized what was in front of him, and he shrieked and stepped back in the opposite direction, stumbling.
"Uh, uh boss," he stuttered. "I mean Tee, how are y—"
"I could have sliced your head off—" he paused. "You, what's your name again?"
"It's Peg, sir, I mean Tee."
"Peg," he said, squinting. "Peg, don't you owe me money?"
"Yes, Tee," Peg waved his hands in front of him in defense and stood up, stammering. "I, I've been making payments, you can ask any one of your bursars!"
Tee sheathed his sword and walked towards his desk. "And what makes you think that my bursars are so truthful?"
"Well, I...I guess I'm not sure, Tee."
Tee moved to sit at a large, burgundy, cushioned table, and pulled one of its drawers out. He set a gas-filled vial in one of the indentations on the table's leather surface. Peg gazed at it with yearning before he noticed Tee staring at him expectantly.
"You have a message for me, Peg?"
"Yes! Yes, sir, I mean Tee, we've just received a signal from the info relay." He paused, waiting for Tee to respond before realizing that Tee was losing his patience waiting for him to finish his message.
"Sorry, the signal came from the Oberon search party."
Tee took a deep breath at this, and leaned back in his chair waiting for the bad news: When ships and pilots went dark the reason was never favorable.
"It seems," Peg continued, "that they tried to pick up a scavenger ship that had been scrapping in orbit for days. They stalked them, but failed to subdue them."
"Where are they now?" Tee replied shortly with a cold stare and twitched his ebony head-feathers.
"O-one of the party decided to hang back from the assault and tail 'em, instead. He said after taking out the others they sped off to the Vega jump-point." Peg spoke quickly and nervously, as he could tell that the combination of the bad news and the time it was taking him to get to the final point of the message was making Tee furious—his breathing accelerated and his hands were starting to ball up into fists.
"They've been tracked to a large city on Selene, and we've been contacted by a dock worker. He expects payment, sir."
"He'll get it," Tee snapped. "What about our brothers on Selene?"
"They know where they are, Tee."
Tee smirked behind his beak and looked up at an electric shotgun mounted on a wallscreen which showed a full day footage loop, from sunrise to sunset, of a picturesque landscape on Kabal III. His smirk waned and he looked back at Peg.
"Got any info on 'em?" he asked.
"We've been cross-checking their ship id with our records, Tee," Peg replied.
"Well let me know when you find something."
Peg nodded agreeably, and spun around on his prosthetic, hastily making for the exit. He'd seen folks enter Tee's office never to be seen again, so he didn't want to be in it any longer than he absolutely had to.
"Peg."
He froze and swallowed audibly, shaking as he cleared his throat and turned around.
Tee now had the SLAM vial in his hand and was twirling it through his fingers. "Do you think I want someone working for me who can't even notice when there's someone standing next to them, ready to chop their head off with a large, engraved, high-carbon blade?"
Peg knew the answer. "N-no, sir, I mean Tee, no Tee, I-it was an accident." Peg had gambled his leg away but was now gambling with his life the longer he stayed in this room.
"You think about that Peg," he said, nodding him out of the room. Peg didn't need to be told twice, and swung the door open almost tripping on his way out. As he made his way down the first few steps he thought about the look Tee gave him, thought about how Tee could have taken him out right then and there, but hesitated, and for some divine reason let a disappointment stumble out of his office with all his fingers and toes. Before the door closed shut behind him, the sounds of the SLAM vial breaking and sharp inhaling made his heart skip a beat, sent shivers down his spine.
Back on Selene, the faint blue glow of dawn was just beginning to peek over the horizon, searching the dead streets of the slumbering city. The light of the sky penetrated into Manne's bedroom, caressing Manne's eyelids, convincing them to open. His eyes slowly felt around the dark room, over the tiny blinking charging lights of various electronics, and he retracted back to the soft-spun silk of his expensive hotel pillow. Still dark enough to go back to sleep, he thought.
As he was fading, a sharp click bounced around the living room of the suite, and the quiet stillness of the early morning gave way to the unmistakable sound of muffled breathing. Manne's eyes sprung wide open, and as quietly as he could he slid out of the bed, naked as a newborn, and wobbled towards the bathroom like it were his first steps.
The bedroom door burst open, sending wood splinters across the bed, and two dark-dressed humans stepped in, firing at the sheets and pillows, blowing them up into a cloud of feathers and fabric. Two quick blasts from their side struck them fast as lightning, knocking both of their heads into their shoulders, and they collapsed down to the ground to lay lifeless with a plume of grey smoke rising up through the holes in their hats.
Manne stood in the bathroom doorway with light rays from his window reflecting off the energy pistol in his hands, illuminating his eyes and pendulating genitals. Without covering up, he shamelessly shuffled into the living room, pointing his pistol at the open door of his suite. He peeked out into the hallway before closing the door, and stood a moment with his free hand on the door knob, breathing the slow extended breaths of a thinking man.
His mind clicked into action, and he raced back to his room to quickly ready his bags and dress. "Kay!" he shouted. When he was finished he smelled his armpit, and decided he couldn't do anything without being able to withstand whatever emanated from his body when his arms were raised, so he put on some deodorant. "Kay!" he repeated. With no answer, he voice-activated his mobiGlas to call Karath, and realized that the beeps in the other room were going unanswered; he paused with the deodorant in his hand mid-application.
He ran into Karath's room and picked up her mobi. Confused, he quickly searched the suite for her and assumed the worst when he found nothing. He grabbed what was necessary from both their baggage, and set off out of one of the hotel's stair exits, to travel on foot through what was left of the waning darkness.
Karath had been out all night, spending most of her time sitting by the docks, letting the unending sound of shallow waves carry her to calmness. By the time she got back to the hotel, police had swarmed the place, and one look up to her suite showed a party of investigators and a coroner, complete with news drones filming and broadcasting from right outside her suite room window. She feared the worst.
Manne was dead or alive, she thought, and in either case, she knew the best thing for her to do was to get back to the ship hanger. She flagged down an automated taxi, and made her way back.
When she got there, the sun was already high in the sky, the hangar bustling. Without Manne's ship ID, they wouldn't just let her waltz into the bay, so she visited the main office to search for someone she knew.
No luck.
She left the office and stared at the large opening to the hangar, already constructing a plan for how she was going to sneak in. Just then, a large, fat hand gripped her shoulder, and she spun around, startled.
"Weren't you the girl yesterday with all the scrap?" the man asked.
"Y-yes. I need to get to my ship, but don't have my ID," she replied.
"I don't see your truck, did you finish selling all that scrap in one day?"
"No, of course not, my co-pilot's still out there sellin' the rest of it. I came back to check up on my ship."
"Your ship, you say?" he inquired skeptically. "Your co-pilot?"
"You got a bad ear?" The sassiness was real even though her story wasn't. "Yes, my ship, are you gonna help me through or not?"
He squinted back at her and chuckled. "Yeah, kid, follow me." He motioned her to follow him and when he turned his back she exhaled relief and dipped her head down. He lead her down a path to the side of the hangar, behind some large shipping crates.
The man turned his head to talk to her as they walked. "You ever been to Nul?" he asked. Immediately, she noticed that they were both out of the line of sight of the rest of the hangar.
"No," she responded.
"You should go sometime, there's a big cruiser on Ashana done crash-landed years ago. The ruffians took it over and turned it into one heck of a city."
"Where are you taking me?"
He disregarded her question. "There's a tevarin boss, there, name's 'Tee'. Word on the relays is that he's lookin' for a couple a pirate-killers done whacked his goons."
She slowed her walk to gain some distance from him, desperately looking for a door, a crevice between the crates, a vent, anything she could use to slip away, though she had her doubts that he would let her.
"Word has it," he continued, "that the killers be flyin' a retrofitted scavenger." She stopped and stared as he slowed his walk and began to turn around.
"Maybe those pirates deserved it," she said lowly.
As he turned far enough to reveal himself, Karath eyed the object in his hand: A rusted old combustion pistol that's probably seen better days many years ago. He smirked his mouth open to reveal a golden tooth among rotten ones.
"Or maybe I deserve this bounty I'm ah get for killin' you for my brothers on Nul five."
She couldn't believe where she was: She'd gotten so close to the ship and this Meat-head Sausage-fingers stood in her way. If only she had one of the pistols she'd left in her room. He was too far to take his away from him, and she was too close to make a break for it without the high probability of getting shot by that rusted old thing he called a gun. Thousands of thoughts went through her head, and half of them were about resisting. The other half came from the fear that she had nothing going for her, and all the hope in the stars wasn't enough to sway the tide of the universe to her favor, that she would die here behind some shipping crates to a goon for gold teeth. She stood silently and curiously watching his finger as it slid down the trigger—her entire existence rested on the broad shoulders of a dock worker, and the tick of a second-hand would be what separated two split existences: the universe where she lived to carry out her vengeance; the present one where she didn't.
Just then, as she was staring into his eyes, they jolted wide, bulging, and before she got a chance to read his expression he was already dead, his face squished against the floor, the last face he'd ever make in this universe. Manne stayed crouched post-pounce over his large body, leaning on the knife impaled in his thick, round skull, and as he caught his breath he stared at the black lines streaking up and down his fat, rolling arms.
"WiDoW junkie," he said.
"ECKLESTEIN!" Karath gasped, and Manne looked up at her, disapprovingly.
"Now, you call me that?"
She took steps toward him, each quicker than the last, and he released his dagger and rose to embrace her over the twitching body of the junkie. She squeezed tears out of her eyes and her beak shook.
"I got back to the hotel, they...I thought you were dead, Manne."
"I thought the same about you, dead or captured."
She pulled away to look up into eyes she thought she'd never see again. "What do we do?" she pleaded.
"We gotta get outta here, and you...you gotta be strong. If the reach of this gang extends this far, this fast, they're not going to stop hunting us. They won't simply tell their connections around the galaxy to 'never mind.' It just won't happen. We've disrespected them too hard to just be forgotten about." Manne looked into her blank face, the look of a child in shock, still trying to process the event, still trying to grasp hold of something to anchor her down in the storm that found her.
He gripped her arms. "Understand, Kay? You've got to be smart, you've got to be strong. It all starts now."
She closed her beak and nodded, furrowing her feathered brow as she focused in on him. "Mhm." she agreed, just as an energy blast shocked and absorbed into the shipping container nearest to them. Manne and Karath ducked startlingly from the shockwave, and the split second it lasted was long enough for Manne to draw his energy pistol, find his target, and fire. The sound of the pistol firing next to Karath's head made her flinch, but she quickly reached for the second pistol, holstered in Manne's backpack, clicked the safety off and turned towards her already incapacitated attacker.
Manne was behind her, running in the other direction with her free hand in his own, and she almost let go of the gun as she was pulled towards him.
They ran to the end of the container row, meeting gun blasts and immediately hopping back to take cover. The moment the shots paused, they both peeked out, high and low alternatively, and shot at their attackers.
They were seasoned shooters: They'd been firing these same energy pistols for years, and at this distance had their accuracy down to a one shot, ninety-nine percent accuracy.
Their attackers gripped their hearts, where the first blasts got them, before second shots got them in their necks and they dropped down to the floor convulsing. Manne and Karath bolted for their ship as the hangar's security alarm went off, and in the distance they could hear the echoes of police sirens.
As they got to their ship's cargo bay entrance, they were already taking distant fire from two sprinting security guards far across the hangar. Karath quickly entered a code into the door panel and as the bay door dropped they fired back in the direction of the guards.
"Run in, Kay! Get the ship up!" Manne yelled.
"Copy that!" she answered.
She disappeared into the interior of the ship as Manne stayed at the cargo bay door, firing shots out of it as it closed. He ran over to the E.V.A. pressurization exit on the side of the ship, opened the hatch, and fired out of it using the hatch cover as a shield. He hit the chamber's comms button. "Karath, when you get the ship up, power the right side shields and get us the hell outta here!"
Karath was already in the bridge seat firing up the engines. "Copy that!" she yelled.
The ship rumbled awake with the deep hum of the engines, and as the panel lit up, Karath preemptively placed her fingers over the shield controls. Manne leaned against the wall in anticipation of the shield activation, but outside of the ship, one of the guards had taken aim at the inside wall of the pressurization chamber and fired blasts in succession from his energy rifle. The blasts made contact with the wall just as the shields went up, and the energy surge in the area created arcs from the blast point all around the chamber, shocking Ecklestein. He convulsed, sending out a loud growl through gritted teeth before dropping to floor, the hatch closing shut behind him.
"Where do we go," Karath asked frantically over the comm. "Where are we going?"
She began to panic at the silence, and in a rush of gut instinct, she flew the ship straight out of the hangar and rode a wave of laser blasts up into the atmosphere. "Manne," she cried, "Ecklestein!"
No answer.
They were jetting out of the atmosphere, the urban sprawl laid out before them, washed out in sunlight and disappearing into Selene's surface as the bridge window became saturated by the deep black of outer space.
The sound of a stomp and a grunt behind her made her jump and look back to see Manne leaning against the doorway with his hand gripping his side.
"Manne!" she exclaimed. A smile flashed only halfway across her face before the blinking light above the door revealed Manne's shirt, pants, and hands, all soaked in blood, and she gasped as she slowly looked back up to his grimacing face staring back at her.
"Manne," she gasped, and he responded with a shaky voice through clenched teeth.
"Let me drive, Kay."