Chapter 2
For now, he’s surrounded by six or seven leather clad, titanium pauldron clasped, spectrum analysis visored, and mostly inebriated pirates, he’s still holding the item – a silver locked box of no significance to him – that the royal family of R43 requires. Maybe this Human would give up the parcel on any other day, and head off to the golden beaches of Tioir near the White Sphere of the Hub, sail the mercurial winds of Azzel on a photon finned board, sip ruby wines from trade platforms above a royal home world Dyosoel, or lose his worries in the heavy mind spinning spirits of the liquor halls in hidden stores on Scervius 5, brimming in fastidious distraction on his vacation. All to forget an old issue. Instead, being an elite royal guard from Huvar, he is equipped with a gravity field suit layer that surrounds him against low level kinetic attacks, as well as neural controlled target locking ordnance rockets on both his suit’s shoulders created by his chest implant’s hard light kit, they fire dense photon projectiles that explode into a brilliant flash of light, stunning anyone hit, along with two electrically charged proton blades powered by energy couplers on his wrists like handless gloves, exploding positively charged energies upwards and encapsulating inches or even nearly a meter passed his fingers in the shape of a tear, tapering to an infinitely sharp point. He might normally use the roughness of a tired voice, retracting the usual resolute certainty of hope, leaving the tone of impatience with its flavour of anger to convince his assailants against their poor choice of target. Among many advances in technology that allow him comfort in times of conflict, or experience of a long life to affect his negotiating strategies, he also has something the pirates never see coming.
Nor he, for that matter. A third party.
“I was waiting around for the inevitable, comical palaver, but seeing as neither side finds tradition to taste. Well, let’s just say I’ll start things with a joke I once heard.” Comes a voice paired rigidly with computerized filters, not pirate in origin nor royal guard, but a voice like a thief’s voice: calm, a rhythm set to a cadence of mockery, married to the air sizzling thunks of heated ammo from the thief’s rifle. The Human finds it hard to make out the exact words the thief is saying, as part way through, the gun fire snaps everyone’s attention to him. Not that the Human didn’t understand what the thief said at all, for the implants afforded to him by the providence of his position captures each sound wave, splices it into separate categories, and reroutes it to his auditory center. To the Human, the sudden sound swelling boom of the rifle was implied, as his suit and other implants further spliced the disturbance in the air, the velocity of the blast, triangulating the position it came from and routes that information to the spatial center, and decision center of his brain.
He understands that the thief, after mocking everyone, swung his rifle, the clicks and slides of the clearly strange rifle denote its many settings and advanced technologies, leapt through the air given the force of pressure from a relatively close distance – the top of his spacecraft – finished his second sentence with a volley of heated plasma, the impacts of which narrowly missed the Human, plinked a couple times off the pauldrons of the closest two pirates, and sliced through the flesh and fabrics of two other pirates, killing them instantly. Finally, the thief lands a meter or so off to the Human’s left side with one foot and then another, and sighs in some fashion of disappointment. The implication being that two pirates, armoured from the shots, still stand. Barely, confused, thinking.
Being that the Human was more calm than usual, that the reward of a long vacation awaited him beyond handing over the useless, small crate, he granted the thief and the pirates some moments to attempt what they wanted to do. And he grew curious of the motivations that festered between the two parties. For a long life did not just widen the perspectives of the ones who live it, but it also widened the wisdom of patience in times of stress. This, the Human thought between blinks, is a like a long, stress relieving sigh.
Somewhat immediately, after a short stretch of shock, panic, discord and finally anger, the pirates strike back by tensing their balled fists, letting blasts of tiny, sharp projectiles from their wrists sing through the air towards the thief. Their other borrowed weaponry raise parallel to the ground, take aim, and with frigid, untrained incompetence, fire white hot streaks of fragmented metal. Taking only minimal damage on his right arm, the thief, now out of the way, knots a latch on his rifle, twice, three times, and four times, before taking a breath, exhaling, and leaning into his shots. Each atmosphere stinging bullet echoes through the gurgling pirates’ throats, dropping one for each motion the thief made with the finesse and agility of an artist. Paintbrush in hand, he dips his strikes into their bodies to stroke the dirt beneath with colour. Satisfied, with his rough, machine filtered voice due to his mask, he repositions. It all happens in one smooth motion.
Another long stress relieving sigh, and the Human calculates that in another ten seconds, the remaining pirates would be dead around him, and the thief would either shoot him next, or holster his rifle.
In a swift motion, the thief takes long strides to the still breathing pirates. One, fully unharmed save for whatever psychological pains he now feels after seeing his friends drop around him like the peeled hull of a light cruiser from the force of a battalion. And two others, still alive after their injuries, on their way to know the long truth. The thief, noticing his imminent victory, yawns – a strange, yet ignored act. Swinging his rifle to the dying faces of the pirates, he tells them his joke, each sentence ending with the pull of a trigger. By the end, with each remaining pirate surely dead and doubly so, the thief turns around, and finishes his joke to the Human who stopped paying attention when the thief yawned:
“And that, he lied, was the last laugh of an honest man. Well, it was indeed a prolonged fuss, but here we are. You’re from Huvar, aren’t you? I recognize the shit stained brown mark on your ship, with the blueish weird, sparkle like the center of a neutron star. So that makes you an important emissary of some sort, doesn’t it? I mean, that family has guards, but a Human guard? Nah, that’s something you don’t see every day. Definitely not every day, indeed. Well, are you going to do something?”
The Human doesn’t do anything yet, instead he takes the time to recalculate the time he’ll have to spend bringing the silver locked box to the Rekkel royal family, regardless of this thief with modulated voiced words behind a dark smooth cover.
Suit readings indicate to the Human that the thief will plan on making a move, as the thief is leaning ever so slightly to force the exceptionally intelligent onboard computer to signal to the Human’s decision center of his brain.
“Don’t move.” He says.
“Whoa, no worries at all, last man. No worries. What’s that you have in your hands? I mean, I did just save you from the carrion bastards a moment ago.” The thief inquires, as he takes a step. But it’s not so much an inquiry as it is a melodic disarming, a distraction. Asking a question, even unanswered, forces one to think.
As the crunch of the thief’s thick boot echoes out in the wasteland near the port where the firefight ended the lives of several pirates, the Human’s advanced armour ignites its gravity shield, two blades pierce the air, shaking his arms with the force of their expulsion like bullets from a gun. Engine banks layered on the backside of the Human’s suit flair up, a slight whine signals to the Human’s various brain centers that given the word, the pure white plasma from the several jets on his back will place him and his blades at the throat of the thief before a move can put him at a disadvantage. For posterity’s sake, the proton blades hum at a polite frequency, rather than a frequency that disagrees with life.
“I said: don’t move, thief.”
“Technically, you just said ‘don’t move’, but I get it. I get the concept, you can sheath your fancy knives.”
“Back farther’n that.”
“Whoa, I’m already far back as it is, last man.” Rising his layered machine shaken voice in rivulets like a chuckle.
“Calling me that will more than end you in a bad place.” The Human’s body shivers from the force of the plasma jets, his request and show of promise cause the thief to raise his hands.
“Then what should I call the impossible man? You know, I’ve heard stories of you. I never believed them until I kept hearing them. Over and over, heroic mission this, bold task that. What brings you here?” If it weren’t for the stoic stance of the Human, the readiness to attack or defend in whatever way felt real to him, the thief might reveal his face. Act friendlier.
“None of your concern, I have business to get to.” Neutral spoken like the care he’d reserve for a trying child stepping on last nerves.
The Human takes his leave, lowering the flashy effects; the weapons, the blades, the shield, and telling the ship to bring itself to the port, where it will stow itself away till he collects it. Like an obedient pet, the engines purr, shudder the air around it, the force which pulls it into the air towards the tall, wide hangars of the planetside port. Or land-to-space doorway. A metaphorical port on sea.
Two pairs of footsteps over the wasteland on R43 trudge on for nearly an hour before the Human pivots to face the tech veiled thief. Only emotion to discern from the voice he tossed around with a computer’s modulator.
“Hey, I get it, my hands are up I mean you no harm. Just wanted to introduce myself is all, seeing as how we share some things in common.” The thief does a slight bow, the Human weighs down his brows beneath the one way screened helmet, before it releases his face to the planet’s dry conditions and hissing hollow breeze. “The name’s Carmine. When you’ve impressed me a second time, I’ll tell you my last name. And when you’ve done so a third time, I’ll tell you my nickname.”
The thief smiles, gestures a weak, bored wave, and shrugs. Appreciative to look upon the Human’s face in greater detail, the scar, the eternal tiredness beholden to immortals. Hoping that it means a merry discussion, and not a refined show of threat. Sort of threats meant to be final and resolute. A face last seen by a dead man.
“Names? What use would I have for your names? Less of all your nickname. Everything’ll be better if you’d let me alone to carry on.”
“Aw, big last man has no patience for social matters?”
The Human stares vacantly for a second, or two, maybe minutes pass by before he responds, “Best be careful with who you provoke. All to get under me, or know me. Go your own way, thief.”
“Alright, but you’ll see me again real soon.”
And Carmine the thief leaves the Human alone, in the dunes of a rocky wasteland, from his ship, from the surface’s sparse ports, on a direct path lead by his suit’s guidance systems to the royal family’s main home.
It will be a ten-hour walk to the toothy broken maw of houses, as air space within any royal family’s home is heavily restricted – especially from other royal families and their employees. In times of war, royal family guards are the first messengers of the long truth, usually the reason why wars break out at all. Although a war hasn’t occurred since before this elite royal Human guard began his work with the Huvar royals, the long lives of every family binds them to a keen paranoia. Not that the Human minds, nor cares, if he’s to meet the long truth, he knows he’s lived longer than any Human that’s ever lived. When they did, that is. If he were to live to see a war big enough to mark itself in the annals of Galactic Dates, he might feel the long lie of immortality has run its course into redundancy. That is, if he never comes upon Earth again, or the answer to the fate of his species.
In fact, that’s the very plight he shared with his employer: to take the time to search for Humanity. For a planet disappearing was a strangely common thing in the chaos of space around the Hub and its central White Sphere twinkling dimly like a dead star. It was a curiously strange thing for the Human, and so he wished very much to begin searching for clues. First, deliver the silver locked box.