A faint bloody wheezing filled the hallway. A sound all too familiar on battlefields, the wet gasping served as the Reaper’s herald. A bitter rasping, a harsh struggle for the last breath of air before the eternal darkness. Rattling out of a body too damaged to live, indeed, too damaged to still be living. But the noise still came. A struggle against fate, against inescapable truth. A soul that refused to enter the Long Night, a spirit not yet done with this world.
But fate cannot be denied, nor can the utter desolation of a body be ignored. The rasping, rattling breath proved to be the last. It sputtered, a flame moments before its fuel is expended. The rattling faded to gurgles, pushed through blood and ruined tissue, forced out through the wreckage that had once been a living being. The gurgles faded to silence. Death had visited and taken his Chosen.
Bor My stepped over the dying Swrun whose death rattle filled the hallway. It was no surprise he was dying, seeing as the Swrun had a hole punched through his chest and his arm torn off. Glancing around, Bor could not see a single Swrun body intact. Thirty odd dead or dying Swrun and not one was whole. Some remained identifiable as Swrun. Some.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Louth muttered under his breath. “Gqrsk bhwnl, it looks like they were fed through a meat grinder.”
Bor had to agree. The scene before him was something out of the mind of a twisted madman. Twisted and crushed bodies lay strewn along the floor and the walls, tossed about as if by a windstorm. Unfortunately, it was not the first one of its kind Bor had seen today. In the hallway behind him lay yet more bodies, not as damaged as these, but greater in multitude.
“He just keeps getting worse,” Bor intoned flatly. “First it was the ships, then the camp, now he’s hell-bent on destroying a space station single handedly.”
“If anyone could do it, it’d be Clint Stone,” Louth replied. Bor grunted in reply, not wanting to open his mouth. He feared if he kept it open too long he might vomit. As the pair made their way down the hallway following the trail of blood and death, the smells and sights became nearly overpowering. When a body is torn in half, the intestines are exposed to the air, and whatever is in them at the time of their owner’s death gets released into the outside world. There were many such bodies shredded beyond recognition.
Faintly, the din of combat could be heard in the distance. Not the sounds of combat, Bor thought to himself, the sounds of a massacre. Screams, plasma shots, and dull thumping could be heard echoing down the metal tube that passed as a station hallway. Over it all, Bor could make out the a low roaring, a tortured cry filled with equal parts sorrow and rage.
“Remind me how we got stuck on cleanup detail?” Louth asked bitterly. “I was with him on Lurmena, the first ship he went to.” The Ghurk, hardened mercenary and veteran of hundreds of engagements, shuddered at the memory. “After that, you’d think I’d get off duty for life.”
Bor could still recall the image of the Bandits returning from that mission. Not a scratch on them, but every one of them had wide eyes and many did not speak for a long while. No one would share what happened on that ship either. The story would likely die with them.
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I guess because he listens to us the best?”
“Hmph,” Louth groaned. “As much as he listens to anyone. Damn near catatonic when he isn’t…well.”
The walls were painted with the evidence of that ‘well’. Looking to change the subject, Bor said, “It’s been nearly three weeks, and he still hasn’t visited him. You’d think he’d want to, I dunno, see him at least.”
Louth shook his head. “You can’t fathom how his mind works. He’s different than all of us.”
Bor disagreed. “He may be a different species, but he’s still a living being. We all function more or less the same. He keeps this up, he’s going to self destruct.”
With a dark chuckle, Louth shook his head and replied, “He’s already self destructed. I’ve never seen anyone who went into a revenge fueled rampage survive.” Rolling his shoulders, Louth continued, “What we’re doing at this point, and I mean the Bandits, not just you and me, is ensuring that his last few days mean something.”
To say Bor was shocked would be like saying space was cold. It was an understatement of epic proportions. “You mean you’re not even going to the try and help him? Clint just lost his best friend and you’re just going to channel his rage into a weapon for a few days? And if he dies it won’t matter?”
“Look, I want to help him as much as you do, but there is nothing we can do.” Louth turned his slit pupils towards Bor. “The man is gone. He was already cracked up here,” Louth tapped his temple with a scaled finger, “and now he’s broken. I’ve seen it happen enough times. In my–”
A faint moan filled the hallway, coming from a shadowed doorway. The form of a Swrun soldier was barely visible, propped up against the frame. Both legs were missing above the knee, and a pool of blood was flowing into the hallway where it collected under another body.
“Looks like he missed one,” Louth said, voice gentle. Bor could see the Swrun was past saving, but it would take a few minutes for death to arrive. As he watched, the injured soldier noticed the two Bandits and reached for his sidearm, fingers fumbling weakly for the grip. Bor placed his foot against the weapon, preventing him from drawing it.
The blood covered being stopped struggling almost immediately. It didn’t look like he had much fight left in him. The Swrun’s mouth moved, but his voice was too low for Bor to hear. He leaned closer, putting his ear next to the the gasping mouth.
“What–what was that thing? He t-tore through us like pa-per.” His voice rattled through his ruined body as he spoke, jarring his words.
Bor looked at the Swrun. “He is what happens when you Swrun think you own the galaxy. He is the vengeance of billions of slaughtered souls and he is the one who will bring down an Empire.”
The Swrun closed his eyes. “So…so be it.”
Louth spoke up. “You will not live much longer, soldier. Do you wish for Mercy?”
The Swrun grimaced and shrugged his shoulders, as much as he could, before nodding. Bor stepped back and Louth placed a single bolt in the Swrun’s head. A Mercy for the fatally wounded soldier.
The pair walked in silence for a minute after that, following the carnage leading deeper into the station. “I refuse to believe his mind is so broken we can’t help,” Bor said abruptly.
Sighing, Louth said, “Even if we could, which we can’t, what the hell are we going to say to him? Sorry everything you ever loved was taken by the Swrun?”
Louth stopped in his tracks and looked at Bor. “Everything he loved was taken by the Swrun. His entire race was eradicated by their Empire. There is nothing left for him to fight for. No,” Louth put up a hand, “don’t mention the galaxy or “free beings” or any loftier ideals. Clint didn’t even know the rest of us existed five years ago. No one can fight for something they never knew existed, not enough to keep them going through the darkest times.
“Even you and I wouldn’t last with only the ‘galaxy’ to fight for. We fight for our families, for our planets, for our species. It’s biology. Deep in here,” he tapped his skull again, “is a little itching urge that says ‘Survive. Survive and thrive.’ We may not do either of those things, but we can scratch that itch by ensuring that at least our species continues. Clint can’t even do that. All he had was a notion of ‘the galaxy’ and those closest to him.
“Well, now he doesn’t even have that. His lover is likely dead and his best friend, the one who pulled him back from the brink who knows how many times, is lying in a coma, from which no one expects him to recover.”
Bor had nothing to say to that. It certainly seemed like Clint had given up on life. Ever since Tedix had been broken, Clint had remained silent and still throughout the days. He didn’t speak, he didn’t eat. He simply sat and stared at whatever was nearest. He ate when prompted though. Bor was responsible for seeing to that.
The only time Clint looked alive was when he was killing Swrun. He had remained in his near catatonic state until reports of a Swrun ship came in, and a team assembled to attack. Clint vehemently insisted that he go. No one had argued. After that, he started looking for things to kill. The Bandits found Swrun to point him at.
Then the news had come. During a routine diplomatic mission, Lady Night’s ship had gone missing in Pirate space and she was presumed dead. The one who had relayed it, a Gem Muffleni, had not known Tedix was near dead himself. That pushed Clint over the edge. He had left immediately for his ship and only Bor and Louth had caught up with him before he left. Now, Clint was currently dismantling a Swrun War Station with his bare hands.
“You don’t know Tedix won’t recover. You didn’t see the things I saw.”
“No, I didn’t,” Louth said. “But the mere fact that Tedix survived was a miracle that had to have used up all the luck and karma, whatever you want to call it, Tedix ever had. And I saw what he looked like afterwards. He’s not getting better.”
Bor shook his head. He didn’t think anyone would understand. Tedix hadn’t survived, he’d been saved. He still didn’t believe it himself. He had seen the foot crush the jahen’s chest. He had stood there as Tedix died. But then the impossible happened.
Bor stood frozen in shock. Tedix Jaku was dead, slain by an Irgh. The Jahen That Fights had been laid low, his chest destroyed. Only when the pair of Irgh turned to face the surviving Bandits did Bor come out of his shock. Too angry to even yell, Bor leapt forward to meet them, plasma pouring from his rifle. It did not matter that plasma could not harm Irgh, Bor intended to fire until his energy cell was empty.
Before he could reach the Irgh, a sound filled the ship. It was almost a physical thing, permeating everything. It was a roar of sorrow and rage, a sound full of emotion. It was a promise of immediate and utter death. Bor was knocked to the side as a figure rushed past him, an arrow shot at the Irgh.
For a moment, Bor was convinced Clint Stone had somehow sensed the death of his best friend, his partner in all but love, and managed to cross the entirety of the ship in the span of seconds in order to extract swift and terrible justice upon his killers. But that was impossible, even for Clint Stone.
No, the being who roared his hatred and grief loud enough to destroy a planet was a slight Hyrth medic by the name of Mylak Wesq. Bor watched with shock nearly as great as that he felt at the death of Tedix as the medic charged recklessly into the leading Irgh and tore off his arm.
Swinging that arm like a club, Mylak knocked the Irgh back and leapt onto his neck. With a quick jerk, the small Hyrth wrenched the Irgh’s head to the side, breaking his neck. As the giant fell, Mylak was already in motion, flying towards the Irgh that had killed Tedix. He impacted and blood flew.
When the red mist cleared, what was left of the Irgh lay on the floor and Mylak was kneeling next to Tedix, his hands pressed to the ruins of the jahen’s chest. Bor rushed to Tedix’s side to find the medic simply sitting there, eyes closed.
“What are you doing?” Bor shouted. “Help him!” He didn’t know if it was possible to help someone so far gone, but the medic was the only chance Tedix had.
“I am trying,” the medic replied through clenched teeth. Bor looked more closely and saw that the medic’s hands had melded with Tedix’s chest. Not only that, but the flesh was writhing under Mylak’s touch, twisting and snapping around.
“What–” Bor yelped as the medic looked up at him.
“Be quiet,” he hissed. “I’m trying to save his life.”
Staring at Tedix, Bor watched in fascinated horror as flesh coiled and bone crunched and jerked. Slowly, the flattened and mashed pulp that had been a chest reformed into a rough semblance of a chest, and indeed, it rose and fell as it filled with air.
“What…what the hell was that?” Bor asked after finding his voice. “You just–you just brought him back to life!”
“No,” Mylak said. He sounded utterly exhausted, his words slurring together. “I simply reconstructed his lungs and heart. There is a good chance he will still die, and even after that there is no guarantee he will recover beyond this half life.”
”But how did you do this? I’ve never heard of anything that could do what you just did.”
The medic chuckled a dry chuckle that sounded almost like a cough. “I’ve got a little advantage over everyone else.”
He pushed himself to his feet and inhaled deeply. “I haven’t done that for centuries. It’s more taxing than I remember. You,” he pointed at Bor, “make sure you get him to someone who knows what they’re doing as soon as possible. I could only repair the heart and lungs, restoring blood and oxygen to the brain. He’s still bleeding internally and most of his other organs are destroyed.”
“Me?” Bor asked. “Where are you going?”
“I can’t stick around now, not after what I’ve done here. Can’t have people finding me. If he wakes up, tell him Grixaz sends his regards.”
With that, the medic sprinted away. Bor was too startled to follow him. Later, after Tedix had been stabilized and the ship cleared of Swrun, Bor had gone searching for the medic. Strangely, the Rebellion had no mention of a Mylak Wesq anywhere among their records. The only trace Bor could find was a single missing escape pod, jettisoned during the boarding.
No one believed Bor when he told them what happened, not even Clint. At least, Bor assumed that from the grunts and silent looks. Everyone just said that he had been seeing things caused by the trauma of witnessing. There was no way Mylak could have reconstructed Tedix’s chest, not if an Irgh had smashed it. Bor had simply thought it had been worse than it looked. But Bor knew what he’d seen.
Rounding a corner, the pair nearly ran into the back of Clint Stone. He stood in the middle of the hallway, breathing heavily, blood drenched fists clenched at his sides. At the sound of their footsteps, he spun snarling. Of all the terrifying things in the universe that Bor had come across in his life, the one that scared him the most was Clint Stone, ready to kill.
Before he could strike one of them, the light of recognition flared in his eyes, and Clint dropped his hand, plasma claws retracting. Bor glanced around, noticing the lack of dead Swrun.
“Did you kill them all?” Louth asked, his voice easy. Clint gave an unintelligible grunt and shrugged. “Well, let’s get back to the Hand of War then.”
The Hand of War was what the Bandits had renamed the Swrun Battlecruiser, after Clint’s widespread nickname, the Hand of War or the Warfist. The source of the name was easily identified. Having cleared it of all things Swrun, it was now in the middle of renovation, as the Bandits made it their own. As the base of operations for the unit, Hand of War held all of the supplies and munitions they had collected over their months long engagements with the Swrun Empire. Bor was proud of the name. He had suggested it.
“Wait,” Clint intoned roughly. “There is one thing I have to do.”
That one thing was setting the reactor that powered the station to overload. Bor watched from the rear view port of Susan as the station exploded. The shockwave caused the station to swell like a balloon before bursting and sending thousands of tons of material flying to all regions of space. Some would be caught in the gravity of a star or planet some point in the distant future, but others would continue on their lonely path until the heat death of the universe. A brief flash of light came as the flammable parts of the station vaporized under the heat before extinguishing, having used up all of the oxygen stored on board.
Louth contacted the Hand of War in order to discover their current coordinates before relaying them to Clint so he could find the ship. A major advantage the Hand of War had over the moon base on Illoria was mobility. They could be anywhere in the galaxy at any given moment, making them extremely difficult to track or locate. Word had reach the Bandits about a special unit the Swrun had created specifically to hunt down Rebellion forces acting openly against the Empire. That unit had already dispatched the forces in the Mi’ehg system. There was little other information on them.
Louth and Bor sat in the bay area of Susan as Clint flew from the cockpit. Neither was particularly eager to join him. There is just something about being in the same room as a man who killed several hundred others in the span of a few hours that did not sit well with them. Both Louth and Bor sat in silence, staring at nothing. Even for those used to the sight of slaughter and death, there was still time needed to recover from those sights.
They remained silent for the remainder of the trip, neither speaking or moving much. Bor found a cleaning kit among the scattered supplies in the bay and cleared a workbench. He spent nearly an hour cleaning his varied equipment. When the ship touched down in Hand of War’s hangar, he had just finished wiping down his gun.
There was no one in the hangar when they disembarked. It was not an unusual sight as of late. No one wanted to be around Clint. Bor did not mind. That way he didn’t have to talk to anyone about what had happened. As Bor left the ramp, he turned to see Clint simply sitting in the bay, slumped across a chair, staring at nothing.
After a brief internal struggle, Bor walked back up the ramp. “Hey Clint, why don’t we go grab something to eat in the mess?”
After a moment, Clint turned his head and focused his eyes on Bor’s. Bor flinched in anticipation, ready for the baleful, rage-filled gaze of Clint Stone on the warpath. Instead, it was like looking at a statue. Clint’s face was empty, devoid of emotion. The worst of it was his eyes. Eyes once so full of energy, of purpose, of life, were now flat and dull. After a moment, he flicked his eyes to the side, nodding mechanically. Rising, his limbs moving in much the same way as an automaton fresh off the line, stiff and rhythmless.
Without meaning to, Bor gasped in shock. To see the empty shell of Clint Stone was…disturbing, to say the least. “Clint, you need help.” Bor’s voice came out sharp and firm, an order rather than an observation.
Looking woodenly at Bor, Clint laboriously shook his head side to side. Bor scoffed at him. “You look like the dead living. You don’t eat, you don’t sleep. The only time you show the slightest modicum of interest, you go into a blood rage.” Clint did not react. “You won’t even go see your friend, who is lying in a coma, after having been brought back from the dead.”
Clint shook his head slightly more vigorously than before. Bor took it as a good sign. Anything to remove him from the living death he was in now. Tedix had mentioned Clint entered states similar to this in the past, usually in response to trauma or emotional distress. Perhaps it was a coping method? But regardless, this had gone on far too, it was time to snap him out. “I know it’s hard, I know this reminds you of before. I know you considered Lady Nigh–”
Bor was cut short by Clint gripping him by the throat and slamming him against the wall. “Do not,” Clint seethed through gritted teeth, eyes blazing murderously, “say her name.”
As suddenly as he had lifted Bor, Clint let him go and backed away slowly, the light fading from his eyes. “She wouldn’t want you to be like this,” Bor said, after backing up several feet.
Clint looked up again, the embers flickering in his eyes. “She wouldn’t want to see you a shattered remnant of your former self,” Bor continued. “This hollow husk of a man, who only lives to kill.”
“I was before,” Clint growled.
“See, I don’t think that,” Bor said, still keeping a good distance between himself and Clint. He was being reckless, not stupid. “From what I’ve heard, you were a wrathful spirit, true, but you didn’t murder mindlessly and retreat into your head afterwards. There was always something else to focus on, I think.”
Surely Tedix would have had an easier time of this, as he had been with Clint Stone the longest of any living being. Tedix knew how Clint thought, why he did what he did. But Tedix was not here, which was the source of the problem. Bor had to make do with what he had heard from Tedix and others. Clint stalked forward. “You cannot possibly imagine what I did, or what I am doing.”
“Then enlighten me,” Bor replied. He had him talking, that was more response than Clint had shown in the last few weeks.
Closing his eyes for a moment, Clint seemed to ponder Bor’s words before his upper lip curled and his fists clenched tight. The human stood still for near a minute, his body shaking with what Bor assumed to be rage. Then his hands relaxed and Clint’s face returned to its flat mask. The dead light had returned to his eyes as well.
Baffled, Bor blinked and simply stared at Clint. He had been about to speak, and he had just shut down. Opening his mouth to prod him again, Bor paused when a revelation struck him. What if Clint had done it on purpose? What if he had intentionally returned to his state of apathy and indifference?
That possibility unnerved Bor deeply. That meant Clint’s mind had not been ravaged by the trauma and made void of emotion. Instead, it was nothing but emotion, rage being the most prevalent. Clint simply forced himself to feel nothing in order to not act on that rage. The rage that allowed him to kill entire shiploads of Swrun without blinking. Bor suddenly felt very glad he had not continued to goad Clint. The rage burned so hot inside, Clint was forced to suppress all emotion and thought to keep it contained.
Despite this new development, Bor still thought he needed to help Clint. He’d just have to go about it differently. And he thought he might have just the right thing. It was time to visit the only one who could drag Clint back from the edge he was on. It was time to visit Tedix.
it had never really occurred to Bor what it meant for Clint to lose Tedix. Bor understood losing a friend, even a close one. The life of a Rebel was not one of peace. He thought he had known loss. Bor supposed he still did, but Clint had an understanding of loss that perhaps no one in the galaxy could match. Sole survivor of his race, the Last Son of Earth was his people’s last chance at revenge and closure.
But even a man such as Clint could not do it alone. Every man who swam against the current needed a rock to steady himself. Tedix had been Clint’s rock, and he had been taken away. Now Clint was tumbling backwards into the abyss. After losing everything he had ever known, now his support was gone. But there was hope.
Tedix was not dead. He was alive and stable under the care of the finest doctors the Rebellion had. Bor was currently standing outside of Tedix’s room, watching silently as Clint sat alone with Tedix. The jahen was hooked up to possibly every machine in the hospital and was barely visible under the tubes and monitors.
From the moment they had arrived, Bor had noticed a change in Clint, a tension. It wasn’t the blank, emotionless automaton he existed in with allies, or the mindless blood rage he had facing enemies. It was a tension, a pressure, of water against a dam, that grew more pronounced the closer they got to Tedix.
When they had reached the room where Tedix lay deep in his coma, Bor knew he needed to give Clint some time alone with Tedix. And so he remained outside, the door shut. He could still hear the sobs.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen him in here,” said a voice behind Bor. He almost jumped out of his skin. Turning with more grace than he jumped, Bor found himself face to face with B’honnes, the doctor in charge of the hospital.
“It’s the first time he’s been,” Bor said, clearing his throat quietly.
B’honnes tilted his head to the side. “Really? I would have expected him to be glued to Tedix’s bedside.”
“There were…circumstances.”
Thankfully, B’honnes did not press the issue further. The both of them silently watched the closed door for a moment before Bor turned to B’honnes and asked, “Is he going to be okay?”
The doctor hesitated before answering. “I do not know. By all rights, he should be dead. It’s a miracle he survived the trip here. And not only that, but the amount of trauma he suffered suggests his chest was crushed flat. Yet his heart and lungs were intact when he arrived. I do not know what could do that to a being.”
Bor considered telling B’honnes what he had seen, but decided he didn’t want another person looking at him like he was crazy. Still, if it became utterly necessary, Bor would tell him. “But will he come out of his coma?”
“I don’t know. It’s been nearly three weeks, but I can’t tell you anything more than he’s alive,” the doctor repeated, shrugging. “Tedix’s mind has shut down in order to heal his body, but I don’t know if his body will heal enough. The mind is a delicate thing, and one we don’t understand well. It’s up to Tedix, really, to come back. All I can say is that he won’t get worse.”
A device blinked and beeped rapidly on B’honnes’ belt and the doctor glanced at it before rushing off. “I’m needed elsewhere,” he called over his shoulder, hurrying down the corridor.
Bor returned to his silent observation of the room, waiting for Clint to come to terms with the reality he was faced with. He waited a long time before the door opened and Clint walked out. Bor pointedly ignored the wet trails down Clint’s face and damp shirt. Though Clint’s face was twisted in deep sorrow, it was still an emotion, and Bor was willing to call this progress.
“Is…there anywhere to get food?” Clint asked slowly, a man waking up from a deep sleep. Bor hide his grin as he looked around.
“I’m not sure, but I’m positive someone could point us in the right direction.”
There was something comforting about darkness. Not the shadowy darkness of the deep forest or cast by imposing structures with the light of the moon. Not the cold darkness of space and the harsh darkness of the extinguished fire. But the welcoming darkness of a home, in the long hours before the dawn. The warm darkness of sleep. The soft darkness of a midsummer’s night, spent beneath the sky. That was the darkness I found myself in.
I floated in it, melded with it, was it. The dark was home, and home was the dark. Here, I had no worries, no memory, no pain. I simply existed as an idea, not even as a solid being or conscious. If I truly tried, I think I could have pulled myself together into a whole, but I preferred to float, drifting in the darkness. It was comforting.
Time did not hold any meaning in the dark, so after a lifetime, after a millennia, and after a second, I felt a tug. It was not the hard, violent tug of a fisherman and his prey, but the soft tug of a child seeking the comfort of their parents’ arms yet not wishing to disturb them. The tugging grew slowly in intensity, pulling on the whole of my being dispersed throughout the darkness. Perhaps it was simply pulling on the darkness and I was being dragged along with it.
But no. The darkness became thin as the tugging became stronger. I struggled then, pulling back against the tugging, wishing to return to my darkness, my home. But the tugging could not be stopped. As the tugging continued, memory became to flash against my being. A small jahen cub, being carried by his father, gentle words whispered in his ear. A jahen youth, running for his life in the streets, fleeing those who would do harm.
There was a beautiful jahen female, one who made the jahen smile and his heart race with a look. The jahen on his knees, tears on his face, as she left for the last time. Chains, restricting the jahen as he tried to escape, his broken leg howling. A human, bound in chains of the body. The same human, his soul untouched by the chains. Epic traverses across the breadth of the sky, dangers met and bested.
Visions of battle and conflict overwhelmed my memories, glowing intensely among the rest. A band of brothers, at whose center stood two who were more than brothers. I remembered a metal floor and a burning chest. I remembered a crushing force, then…nothing. The darkness came after. But the darkness became faint, laced through with light and noise. I struggled feebly, fighting to return to that darkness, that comfort. But it was denied me, vanishing before my grasp.
I felt my body, solid and whole, a small vessel viewed against the darkness, but a familiar one. The touch, then the memory, then the idea of the darkness passed from my mind as swiftly as I had been pulled from it and I returned to my body in full.
I opened my eyes.