The Watch arrived, pushing their way through the crowd. Even in a backwater frontier town, a shooting in a public restaurant draws the attention of the law, if only to keep up appearances. They questioned several people, decided there was nothing to be done here, the killer would be too hard to catch. Besides, it was just an orphan boy, one of the hundreds in a town like this. It was lucky none of them mentioned that sentiment to Clint, otherwise they would not have left with their heads.
They released the body to Clint, as the boy had no other family. He took Regon back to the Susan and he dressed him up as best he could. Clint flew the body to the highest mountain on the planet and buried Regon on the peak, as close to the stars as he could. Clint remained on the top of the mountain, standing in silent grief for hours, despite the cold winds and snow. When he was done, Clint returned to the ship and we flew in silence back to the town. I could feel the rage building inside of him. We landed.
“What are we going to do now?” I asked Clint, already knowing the answer.
“Now? Now, we make them pay. The Thief’s Guild will pay for every child they have forced into servitude and then cast aside. They will pay for every second they took from Regon and they will pay for the happiness they stole from this world. They will pay with their blood and their tears and their shattered bones.” Stone’s voice was harsh, harsher still than when he threatened the Flow junkies. All of the rage Clint had bottled up was beginning to seep out of the cracks forming in the wall he had built to keep it in and I did not want to be in the way when that wall burst. His face was calm, unnaturally calm. He turned to me and his pupils flickered with rage, a dark red shifting deep in his eye, just far enough past the range of normal vision I couldn’t focus on it. “I am going to rip them apart. Every last one of those Thief bastards will feel my hands around his neck before he follows his friends into the void.”
I swallowed. If there is one thing that I wished to never face, it was an angry Clint Stone. I would willingly fly into the heart of a supernova if it meant I could escape his rage. And the Thief’s Guild had angered him beyond anything I had seen before. He stood up and walked into the bay, with that air of calm surrounding him. That calm terrified me. That calm signaled something, something terrible, but I did not know what. I followed him to the bay to see him pulling on his suit, the one that could stop plasma bolts. Over that he wore his normal clothes, well-fitted brown leather pants, a deep red shirt open below the neck, and a long coat, designed to look like it was on the verge of becoming a tattered old rag, but was actually quite sturdy. Around his neck, Clint placed Regon’s oddly carved necklace, the one that meant family. On his head, instead of the suit’s helmet, rested a wide brimmed hat. He cut an imposing figure.
I quickly slipped into my suit and tugged on clothes over the top. As I struggled with my outer dress, Clint walked over to the wall and flipped a panel I had never seen before. Underneath lay an arsenal. Knifes, pistols, rifles, grenades, a minigun, and a missile launcher filled the compartment. Clint sifted through it and pulled out a particularly wicked curved knife. He smiled and tucked it under his coat. Beside it he added two of those strange metal pieces with the spikes and holes in the side that he called ‘brass knuckles’, four more ordinary, albeit razor edged, knifes, and several pistols.
“What are you doing?” he asked me, his voice normal. He had finished arming himself and was studying at me, frozen in place with my suit half on, staring at the open arsenal. He looked around and noticed what I was starting at. He sighed and shut the panel.
“It’s just something for a rainy day,” he explained.
“There are enough weapons in there to field a small army,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. He grunted and tightened his gun belt, which he had pulled from the cache and hide under his coat. I shook my head and finished dressing. I went to the regular armory and pulled out a pair of pistols.
“What are you doing?” Clint asked me again.
“I’m coming with you. I may not have liked Regon as much as you, but he deserves justice.”
“Damn right, he deserves justice. But that will wait. Right now, we need information.” I couldn’t believe my ears. Regon was dead, a boy Clint had basically adopted, and he was still going on about information on the Swrun Empire. He must have seen something in my face because he said, “I’m going out to find one of those Thief bastards and he’s going to sing.”
I didn’t know how singing would help the situation, but I assumed that Clint meant he was going to interrogate said Thief.
“And I’m coming with you,” I insisted. I wasn’t going to be left out of this.
“You’re staying here. I won’t be gone long.” With that, he backed out of the ship and shut the door. I stood with my jaw open, staring at the door. Then I slumped in my suit, relieved. I had not wanted to stay one minute more in Clint’s calm presence but I had felt obligated to help. This gave me an excuse to be away from Clint. I settled back in my chair, pulling out my vidplayer, to wait for his return.
Hours past and nothing changed. The ship ran an automated systems check and the wind picked up, whistling against the side of the ship. When the bay door opened, I leaped out of my chair. Clint walked in, half-carrying, half-dragging a figure clad in black. He flipped the being on to the nearest bench, hard. He pulled out straps from under the bench and began to tie the figure down.
“Is that …?” I asked.
“No, but it’s one of his friends. She put up a good fight,” said Clint. She? As I looked closer, I could see that the being was indeed female. Clint finished with the last strap, tightening it with a sudden jerk. The being on the table moved her head and I could see that she was awake. And so could Clint.
He rounded the bench and stood at the head. He reached down and ripped the mask off of the being’s head. A pair of slit gold eyes set deep in a pale reptilian face stared back at us, telling me the being was a Fnera. Clint smiled. It was not a pleasant sight.
“I’m glad you could join us. There are a few things you need to know. You and your friends have taken children from the streets and tortured and abused them until they agreed to work for you. For this I will punish you. You and your friends are responsible for the deaths of over a hundred children in the last five years alone. For this I will punish you.” Clint’s voice was light, conversational, cheerful. It seemed disturbingly out of place for the situation we found ourselves in.
“I want you to know one simple fact. You are going to die. Right here, in this ship, on this bench. No one is coming to save you. But you have a choice. You can die in screaming agony, pain coming from every nerve in your body, growing ever worse until you beg me to kill you, or you can tell me what I want to know and I will end it quick. Your choice.”
The fnera looked back at him with hate in her eyes. Her mouth moved and I could see the outline of her tongue moving under her lips. Clint let out a low laugh, a very unpleasant sound. He held up a little white speck in his hand. Looking closely, I could see it was a tooth, sharp and angled.
“Looking for this? That’s too bad. I took it right after I jumped you in that alley. You look surprised. It’s a very old trick, you know, a poison capsule in the tooth. We used stuff like that where I was from all the time. No easy way out for you. So, are you going to tell me what I want to know or am I going to have to hurt you? Either option is fine by me.” His voice was that unnatural calm. With a shock, I realized why the calm seemed so terrible to me.
When I had been caught for the first time, back when I was a young thief, I was put in a cell next to this older prisoner. He was nice, friendly, and peaceful. I was scared and jumpy. He spoke to me, telling me I would be fine and calming me down. He told me his name was Malum Pax. We talked for hours, about nothing, but he made it seem like that nothing was the most important thing in the world. His quiet calm gave me a rock to steady myself in the troubled waters of my mind.
In the morning, the guards came and put another prisoner in Malum’s cell. He was as kind and as gentle to the newcomer, a first-timer like me, as he had been to me. When the newcomer’s back was turned, Malum slit his throat, then sat down and continued talking to me like nothing had happened. I later learned Malum was in here because he had killed his entire family, his wife, his children, and his children’s children. Malum called the Watch and sat in his favorite chair, waiting for them to come lock him up, calm as ever.
That was the calm that I saw around Clint.
“I will never betray the Guild,” the lizard spat. Clint shrugged, then punched her in the side. I swear I heard a rib crack. The lizard gasped and tried to curl up in pain, but her bonds prevented it. I winced at the blow.
“That is the least I can do to you,” Clint said, with that calm air of insanity. “Do you have something to say?”
The lizard hissed but said nothing.
“I thought not. Well, let it not be said I didn’t give you a chance.”
Clint grabbed the lizard’s hand in his.
“Do you know what I am?” he asked the lizard. When he got no answer, he continued as if he had. “I am a human from Earth. Do you know what kind of planet Earth was? Earth was a deathworld. Yes, that’s right. I was shocked when I learned that, too. Kind of ironic, now that I think about it. But I digress. Earth was a deathworld, the worst kind of planet you can find that will still support life. Normally, sentient life doesn’t evolve there but we humans were a tough bunch. I doubt you’ve seen a human before, I think I’m the only one in the galaxy.
“Anyway, the gravity on a deathworld is quite high in comparison to most others. Everything that lives there has to have a rather large bone and muscle density in order to even walk. In order to do more than walk, like say, run or climb, which are necessary skills on a planet where everything is trying to eat you, you need to have a fairly developed musculature. I say fairly developed, but on a deathworld, everything is vastly greater than anywhere else.
“What I’m getting at is that my hand has a ridiculous amount of muscle in it, in proportion to its size. That muscle is highly developed and I can use it to crush almost anything. I once crushed a rifle; that was a fun night. A rifle is made of metal, a decently strong substance. Your hand, on the other hand, is made of bone. Those are not stronger than metal. Well, mine are, but I evolved on a deathworld, you didn’t. There is nothing to stop me doing this,” Clint finished, as he tightened his grip on the lizard’s hand.
Slowly tightening his hand until I could see the knuckles turn white, Clint stared into the lizard’s eyes. They started flat and angry, but they soon grew large and pained. She started to struggle against Clint’s grip, trying to free her hand. Clint’s grip was too strong and she couldn’t even budge it. I heard a snap and the lizard screamed. snap, snap, snap Clint didn’t stop. The lizard screamed louder and louder with each broken bone. Clint squeezed harder. I heard bones shatter and tendons rip. My spine crawled at the noise. The lizard’s screams grew so loud, that I was forced to cover my ears from the pain. The crushed bone broke her scaled skin and her blue blood dripped on to the bench and then the floor, where it pooled. Drops of red mixed with the blue as the bone fragments worked their way into Clint’s hand.
Clint squeezed until the lizard fainted. He lifted his hand, revealing the mangled remains of the Thief’s hand, barely more than a bloody pulp of crushed bone and flesh. He looked on in interest, then grabbed a string of rope from the ground. He tied it tight on the Thief’s upper forearm, making a tourniquet so she wouldn’t bleed to death. Noticing the red blood on the rope, Clint looked at his hand, seemingly just noticing the bone fragments embedded in his flesh. He picked them out with disinterested motions. I shivered. Angry Clint was scary but this calm, dispassionate Clint was enough to make nightmares run. I didn’t know how much more of this I could handle. Clint was clearly insane, not in the ridiculous over-the-top way he does things, but truly, deeply, sick in the mind.
At first, I thought that Regon’s death had done that to him but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Clint had always been on the verge of madness. The sullen, angry Clint that I had known during my time with him after the slave markets was the one who had been so deeply scarred by something he had experienced, he had retreated into himself, leaving nothing but an empty husk. At times, the true Clint shined through, when he had saved the little girl from the Flow Den and he had risked his life on the station, but most of the time it was just the remnants, the angry, damaged Clint that people saw. When Clint had met Regon, his true self had been drawn back out. He had thought it safe to feel again, he had found someone to love again. But the Thief’s Guild had taken Regon from him and now I didn’t know if the true Clint had survived the trauma or if he was dead, leaving just the broken husk.
Clint picked up a bucket from one of the other work benches and filled it with water from the tap in the wall. He poured it slowly over the Thief’s head, waking her. She gasped and inhaled water. She began to cough and sputter but Clint didn’t stop. He poured until the bucket was empty. The Thief lay, gasping for breath and covered in spit from her frantic attempt to force the water from her lungs.
“Are you ready to talk now?” Clint said, in that cheerful, calm voice of Malum Pax. “Tell me what I want to know and I will kill you quickly. If you refuse, my hands are itching for another go.”
“I’ll never … tell you … anything,” gasped the Thief.
“Yes, you will,” said Clint, pulling a knife from his coat and jamming it in the ragged stump of the lizard’s hand, forcing it up into the forearm. The lizard screamed and I emptied the contents of my stomach on the floor. I backed hurriedly out of the bay and rushed to my room. I curled on my bed, and cried. I had never seen such wanton torture before and it was too much for me. A scream came again, resounding through the ship. I covered my ears and prayed for it to end.
Several hours later, it did. Clint wandered into my room, covered from head to toe in blue, dripping blood.
“She talked,” he said, in a voice that didn’t betray the efforts that it had taken to make her talk. “They have a center of operations underneath one of the old warehouses. The one who killed Regon is their second in command. We’re in luck, because tonight is the one night of the month where all of the members are in the same building, gathered for some meeting or ritual. I couldn’t really tell between the screams. But we have what we need.” He tossed a gun belt at me. “Strap up, we’re going to war.”
Clint didn’t bother to change clothes or grab any guns for himself. Instead, as we walked by the arsenal he had hidden under the panel, he grabbed a few dozen knifes. I tried not to look at the bloody mess in the center of the room, but it drew my eye like [translator error: no exact idiom equivalent. Closest substitute: flies to shit]. There wasn’t much left other than a pile of bones and meat.
Clint walked down the ramp and into town. At night, this place was different. No children roamed the streets, not many adults either. Only the hardest of the inhabitants dared wander after dark, but Stone was the hardest of them all. The few souls wandering the streets fled before the bloody specter that was Clint Stone on the warpath. He marched with a single minded determinedness, heading straight for his target.
Out of the night loomed a wide dark gray building, constructed of rusted metal sheets and concrete pillars. Wasting no time, Clint set himself in front of the doors off to the side and smashed the doors down with his foot, propelling them down the stairs behind. With a loud crash the doors collided with the sentry at the bottom, knocking him flat. His boots produced a muffled thud as Clint tramped down into the center of the Thief’s Guild. I readied my pistols and followed him.
Pausing only at the doors, where he speared the sentry through the ear with his wicked curved knife, Clint strode deep into the Guild, shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Come out, come out wherever you are. Papa Clint is here and he’s brought gifts.” A black clad figure ran from a door to the side, pistol blazing. Clint leaned casually to the side, avoiding the plasma fire. Jumping across the distance separating them, Clint landed next to the surprised thief, whose wide eyes only had the chance to see metal glinting on Clint’s upraised fist before his head was caved in.
“One down, eleven to go!” Clint cried into the empty hallway. “Who’s next?”
A door hinge squeaked to the left and I saw a being flow out from behind the door, only to be pinned to it by a thrown knife from Clint.
“Two down!”
Clint walked down the hall and caved in another door with his foot. “Peek-a-boo!” he shouted and dove in to the room. The sounds of breaking furniture and shattered bones came from the open door. A loud, long shriek of pain sounded, only to be cut off. “Five down! Only seven to go, lucky number seven.”
I should have been shocked by the brutality with which Clint dispatched the thieves, but I had grown numb. I saw that the man I had known, damaged though he may have been, was gone and all that remained was a demon of death and destruction. I watched as a thief ran from Clint. He didn’t run fast enough. Clint grabbed the thief’s neck with one hand and his head with the other and ripped the thief’s head clean off his shoulders. The blood sprayed on the wall, and I gazed at it blankly. Clint dispatched several more thieves with similarly gruesome tactics. I don’t know when, but at some point he began to laugh.
“Looks like there’s only two left. I wonder, oh, I wonder where they could be?”
The last door at the end of the hall was the only one undisturbed by Clint’s savage invasion. I heard a deadbolt thrown, to prevent the door from opening, but I knew that would not stop the man of Stone. Clint rushed the door, slamming into it with his shoulder. The hinges gave way and Clint fell into the room. He sprang to his feet. I followed him in, keeping to my feet.
Facing him were two beings, neither clad in black. One, the older one, had a large rifle in their hands and was pointing it directly at Clint. The second, younger than the first, clutched a large knife in one hand. The other was swathed in bandages from wrist to elbow. This was the one who had killed Regon. This was the one who had destroyed Clint Stone. This was the one who would pay the full price.
“So, any chance we can talk about this,” said Clint. “I don’t suppose I could get you to drop that rifle? No? Alright, then.” Clint’s arm snapped back and then shot forward. The wicked curved knife left his fingers and buried itself deep in the chest of the one with the rifle. Clint turned to the bandaged one and smiled. It was the darkest and most depraved smile I have ever seen in my life.
With one swift motion, before he had time to react, Clint grabbed the bandaged Thief and slammed his body to the ground. Ribs cracked. The knife fell from the thief’s weak grip and tumbled away.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” growled Clint, the most emotion he had shown since this had begun. He closed in on the Thief, a knife held high in his hand. I knew in that instant what I had to do. I raised my pistol and I fired. The shot left the end of my gun and entered the Thief’s head, killing him instantly. Clint rounded on me, anger flashing in his eyes.
“STOP!” I shouted at him. “Look at yourself. This bloody, vengeful mess. You shame their memory.” He pulled up short.
“You know NOTHING of them. They’re gone and I have to avenge them,” he roared at me. “They took them from me and I have to destroy them.”
“Not if you destroy yourself,” I told Clint. “If you’re gone, there will be no one left. And you have to be whole.”
“I haven’t been whole since they were alive,” he cried. “They were my life, my everything. They were ripped from my arms and I will kill this whole damn galaxy if I have to, to get my vengeance.” He fell to his knees and sobbed into his hands. “They’re gone and I have nothing.”
“When they died, I, I shattered. My soul was shattered into a million little pieces and nothing can put them back together.” Clint sobbed, his whole body heaving with the force of his cries. I knelt beside him and wrapped my arms around him.
“The man you were before was gone. But right now, you aren’t even a man. You are nothing but a beast and this does not honor their memory. Those million pieces can’t be remade into the old you, but they can be made into a new man, one made in the image of the old. One who they can be proud of.” I tightened my grip on him. “And I am here to help you. I saved you once in the slave markets, I saved your life. That means you are my responsibility. I’ll be damned if I let you become the things that took your family.”
His body shook with his cries. For several minutes only the sound of sobs could be heard, the cries of a man who had lost everything. The sounds came from the deep, dark recesses of Clint’s soul, dragging up the memories he had long suppressed. The cries slowed. His voice cracked with emotion when he spoke.
“They were gone. I held them in my arms and then they were gone. In that hole they left, came pain. For a year, I was numbed by that neural implant. You freed me from that, but with freedom came the pain. I got in that ship and I flew off, running from the memories. I thought if I tried hard enough, I could forget. I thought if I killed enough people, got enough money, enjoyed enough pleasures, they would fade from my mind. That worked for a while.
“I thought I had buried them deep enough, but when I met Regon … He was just like my boy.” Clint’s voice faded as he lost himself in memories. I waited patiently, quietly for him to start again.
“I fell in love with that boy, you know. I had only known him for that day, but he was already my son. And then … I had thought it safe. I thought I could move on, but it seems fate had other plans. I … died with him, like I had when my family died. But this time I didn’t have the numbness of mind control to dull the pain. The pain came raw and fresh and with it came the pain of the old.
“You want me to be whole again. You want me to gather up the pieces. I don’t know if I can. I’ve been broken for so long, I don’t know if I can find all of the pieces.”
I stood, pushing off my knee. I offered my hand to Clint. “Then let me help you. I have seen the man you can be and I will help you get there. If we have to walk across a thousand suns or fight a million killers, I will help you pick up the pieces.”
He reached up and gripped my hand in his. He stood and nodded. “Then let us leave this place of death.”
Side by side, we walked out of that place of horrors. We had walked in a shell of a man and a Jahen too weak to help his friend and walked out with that shell filled and I had brought him back.
Clint was better after that. He became more like that man I had seen when Regon was around. Together we journeyed the stars, seeking justice for the slain. And that justice was to fall on the Swrun Empire.