There is one thing one thing you never, EVER do around Clint Stone, or anywhere within a hundred thousand light years of him if you wish to remain a living, breathing organism with all of its limbs attached. He will, if given enough time, forgive or forget most grievances. If you strike him, cheat him, kill one of his friends, blow up a ship, there is the potential that you will escape unscathed. Unlikely, but it is possible. But never, ever harm a child where Clint can hear about it. He will hunt you down and he will make you pay. He will not stop, he will not forget. If you harm a child, you will pay for it with blood and tears and pain, so much pain you will wish your ancestors had never been born. If you kill a child, no force in this universe can stop Clint from hunting you down and removing your skin from the inside. The Thieves’ Guild on Beruna learned that the hard way.
This was about four months after the station fire and Clint was on Beruna to find out some information about the Swrun Empire. We never did find it, but Clint did find something.
“What are we doing here, again?” I asked Clint. We had been walking around this poor excuse of a town for several hours. Clint seemed to just wander from shop front to shop front, looking at everything, buying nothing. We had come to the far reaches of civilization on the advice of some shady character on Kqia. What that advice was, I didn’t know.
“I’m looking for someone,” Clint responded. “They were supposed to be here hours ago.”
“Well, they’re probably not going to show -. Hey!” I shouted when I felt a hand enter my pocket and pull out my Marks stick. The thief ran off into the crowd, disappearing in the large mass of people. Clint dove after him, his large frame pushing the crowd aside. A surprised screech sounded and I knew that Clint had caught the pickpocket.
I hurried over and expected to get my money back. What I did not expect was that the thief held in Clint’s big hand was just a boy. Hanging upside down by his ankle, the boy was fighting to get loose, but failing spectacularly. No more than perhaps ten years old, the rubbery skinned Jsule boy was dressed in rags and shoeless. A necklace hung over his neck, only kept in place by the three small tentacles wriggling under the boy’s chin. A stone with a strange carving, it was just a trinket.
“Well, what are we going to do with him?” I asked after I got past my shock. “We can’t just let him go. We’ll have to give him to the authorities.”
“We can’t do that,” Clint argued. “They’ll just punish him and throw him back on the streets. What we need to do is find -.”
“Just let me go, please?” begged the boy. “They’ll be angry if I don’t come back.”
“Who will be angry?” asked Clint in a soft voice I had never heard before. “Your parents?”
“No, the Guild. They -,” the boy cut off abruptly, as if he realized he had said too much. Clint looked at him, smiled, and then put him back down on the ground, keeping a tight grip on the boy’s shoulder.
There was only one guild around here that would use children. The Thief’s Guild. They were notorious for kidnapping children and using them as cheap labor. I told this to Clint. His eyes widened, then narrowed.
“These Thieves do this, they leave this kid to starve but expect him to steal for them?” Clint growled. His voice softened and he turned to the boy. “Is that why you stole from the Teddy Bear, here?”
The boy giggled and Clint chuckled. I grabbed Clint by the arm and whispered, “I am not a ‘Teddy Bear’. My name is Tedix.”
“Of course it is, … Teddy Bear,” he snorted. The boy giggled again and I saw why Clint had done that. The boy was relaxed and he seemed happy. The boy smiled and it looked strange on his face. It did not look like a face that smiled much, despite it belonging to a child, who should have been nothing but smiles. The thought made me sad.
“Perhaps you want something to eat?” Clint asked the little boy. He nodded.
“Good. I know a place with the best Dsoo melon on the planet. Do you want some?” The boy nodded again.
“Then let’s go get some.”
Clint picked up the boy and put him on his shoulder. The boy looked like a little doll up there.
“What’s your name?” I asked the kid.
“Regon,” the response came.
“Where are your parents?” I asked. The boy shook his head and hunched against Clint, who patted his leg.
“You don’t have to tell the Teddy Bear,” Clint reassured Regon with that oddly soft voice of his. “He’s a little scary, isn’t he?” The boy nodded and I snorted. The boy thought I was scary? He was sitting on the shoulder of the scariest being in the galaxy, the one who made monsters run at the sound of his name. We walked down the street, making quite a sight, I’m sure. The tallest being anyone on this planet had likely ever seen, a furry Jahen who wasn’t in chains or running from the Watch, and a little bright green boy sitting on the tall, pink one’s shoulder.
Clint talked to Regon the whole time we walked in that soft voice, talking about nothing but still, somehow, he managed to get some information out of the boy. It was impressive how much Clint was able to get out of him without actually asking about what he wanted to know. The boy was from the poor section of town, his parents were dead. He lived on the street, but the Thief’s Guild had found him and forced him to work for them. They beat him until he agreed to help them. Clint’s face grew dark when Regon said that, but it changed right back to happy and light when the boy looked at him.
Regon told us about his life in the Guild and how they were mean and they beat him for the slightest infractions. He told us of his friend, Fras, who he hadn’t seen for a long time. He had gotten his necklace from Fras, who said it meant friendship and family. Mostly he told us about the stories he heard from the other Thief children, stories about far away planets and wondrous cities. He was going to be an explorer when he grew up, and he was going to discover new worlds and interesting species. He seemed almost giddy with the thought of leaving Beruna and I’m sure Clint was thinking of taking him with us.
We got to the restaurant and Clint got Regon a big juicy slice of Dsoo melon. The boy tore into it like he hadn’t eaten for a week, which was a depressing possibility.
“Slow down, you’ll choke,” said Clint. “Eat it slow and you can taste the sweet better. There you go, that’s the way to do it.”
This was a side of Clint I had never seen before. He was gentle, he was considerate, and he was, well, likeable. I had no problem with him, but I had been with him since the beginning. Everyone else he met took a disliking to him after a while. In fact, Clint was so different around this little orphan boy, he seemed like a completely different person. I wondered if Clint had been a father. I thought about asking him, but decided against it, he always refused to talk about anything from his past.
“Do you think we could take him with us?” Clint whispered to me while Regon was busy devouring the melon. “We have enough room on the Susan.” There it was. I knew Clint was going to ask that. There was no way that we were going to be able to take care of a kid, not on the trail of destruction Clint left in his wake.
“I think-” I started.
“Good, it’s settled,” Clint interrupted me. He turned to Regon and said, “What do you think about coming with us? We’re explorers, you know. We can take you away from here, into the stars.”
The boy’s eyes widened. He nodded violently, as he couldn’t talk with a mouthful of melon. He hurriedly swallowed.
“Yes, yes. Take me with you, get me out of here,” he said excitedly. Clint smiled with joy, a look so filled with happiness, I knew right there, that Clint had indeed been a father. I had never seen Clint look so happy. His happiness was reflected in Regon’s face. Was I the only one who was thinking logically here? We couldn’t bring -.
The look of happiness disappeared from Regon’s eyes so fast it could have outrun the Susan. It was replaced with a wide eyed look of terror. Eyes focused on a point just over Clint’s shoulder, Regon slumped low in his chair, trying to hide. Clint was too busy being happy to notice but I did and I twisted in my chair to see what Regon was so terrified of. There in the door, stood a tall being dressed in all black, despite the heat. A member of the Thief’s Guild here to take Regon.
As I watched in horror, the figure lifted a plasma pistol and fired a shot. I tried to block it with my body but the chair was awkward and it slowed me down. The shot passed my ear, nicking it, and continued into Regon’s chest. The boy fell back, tumbling to the ground. Clint roared with surprise and rage. He spun, a knife flicking into his hand. He whipped his hand forward and the knife shot forward at the dark figure. It raised its arm to block and the knife buried itself to the hilt in the creature’s forearm. Clint made to run after the assassin but a cry from Regon stopped him.
Clint collapsed next to the boy and gathered him in his arms. He ripped open the boy’s shirt and placed his hands over the wound, applying pressure to stop the bleeding, but even I could see that there was nothing Clint could have done. The boy was dying.
“You’re going to be alright. We’ll walk out of here and we’ll go fly among the stars,” Clint lied to the boy, his voice soft and gentle, soothing. His face had lines of tears cutting through the hard planes of his face, softening them. Regon smiled.
“I’ve always wanted to see the stars,” he whispered. “I hope that-” His voice cut off and I knew he was gone. Clint’s body sagged and he wept, his shoulders heaving. I didn’t know what to do or say. I left Clint to his grief.
When his tears stopped, Clint brushed his hand across Regon’s face, closing his eyes. He reached down to Regon’s chest and lifted his friendship necklace from it. Clint stood, his fist clenched around the necklace. Clint was calm, the calmest I had ever seen before. It was the calm before the storm, the biggest storm this planet had ever seen.
“We have work to do,” Clint said, his voice steady. He looked at me. His eyes, oh, gods, his eyes were indescribable. The deep cold of the furthest reaches of the abyss and the fiery rage of a thousand blazing suns mixed in his eyes and I knew that nothing would stop the storm of retribution that was about to befall the Thief’s Guild. I almost pitied them. They had unleashed a horror beyond their darkest nightmares and they would pay. They had stolen something precious from Clint Stone and he was coming for them.