Chapter One
On the rolling thunder and pouring rain
I’m coming on like a hurricane
White lightning’s flashing across the sky
You’re only young but you’re gonna die
It was raining again; it always rained here.
There were all kinds of planets you could go to in the galaxy. You could go to bright, temperate ones, you could go to desert worlds. On this planet, in this place, it had been raining non-stop for a year. It rained day, it rained night.
With the near constant deluge, the environment had followed with adaptations. Most of the planet was water. Islands dotted the surface and there were even a few land-masses passable as continents. Thousands of square kilometers of mangrove swamps sat at the poles. Near the equator, there was a strip of land that crossed it like a slash of green against a field of blue. It was night on this large island. Right now, a hunt was taking place.
Down in a valley on the island, there was a pack of hunters.
These weren’t any normal hunters, they were slavers. They made their living hunting other sentients and selling them to other sentients, a practice as old as time itself;a practice despised by many.
The slavers didn’t know it, but they themselves were being hunted. They were being hunted by a force greater than any one of them could imagine.
Trallus, the leader of the slavers, looked out from under the roof of his hastily constructed shelter. The shelter ran in a nexus of other prefabricated, snap-together plastic rain covers. Their newly acquired slaves sat in the rain.
“I hate the rain.” he jumped to his feet and flattened yet another scuttling insectoid. Sure, the missing wall allowed them to look out into the dark forest they were situated against. But the amount of bugs and other things that wanted entry was ridiculous.
The clearing they had cleared was too small for this size shelter, but his men had been urgent to get their shelters up. They didn’t like the rain any more than he did.
One of the men behind him looked up at his stomping action. “Was that another one?” Turning, the slaver addressed his friend. “That’s 12 for today. You owe me 10 credits.”
The other man swore some and dug a credit chip out.
Trallus turned, disgusted with his bored men. They hadn’t caught any slaves today, instead busying themselves with gambling and talking about girls. The natives were wizening up and abandoning their encampments. There were more of them out there, though. He could feel it in his bones. This race was more accustomed to dealing with large predators than others had been. They knew how to flee.
Rows of cages sat out in the rain. The number of captives were pathetically low. He had to figure out what was impeding here. This was harder than it had ever been.
The cage nearest him held a trio of younger females. They looked at him with their large, brown eyes in total fear. He’d bet the profit from their sale that they’d end up in a brothel somewhere. They were too pretty for foot-slaves; Their asses were too trim to end up working away in a mine.
One of them started to cry.
“Shut up!” he snapped, lashing out at the cage with his foot.
The bars crashed and the children stopped their noise-making. He hoped to god that they'd finish making their haul soon. He didn’t want his precious few slaves dying from the elements.
Growling he lurched back to his seat and slumped into it.
His longtime companion snorted and went back to cleaning his stun-field projector. “No point in venting it on them. They don’t make it pour like this.”
Trallus snorted and looked back at the other hired hands. “Why don’t you all do something useful? There are a few gaps out on the perimeter that could use another sensor.”
One of the newer men looked up and griped, “Well I’m not gonna go out there. It’s fucking pouring out there.”
After chewing the new guy out for being a lazy glub, Trallus slumped back into his hovering chair again and scowled at the diagnostic for the security grid.
Oh shit...
“Hey, who was supposed to be watching this?” he snapped.
No one even looked up.
Trallus looked back down at the screen. Two of the indicators was glowing red, a sign that there had been an infringement between them. That left a span of about 75 meters. Fuck, it was one of the big ones.
“We’ve had an infringement!” he yelled.
That got people moving.
Where was it, they wanted to know. More importantly, what.
“People, this is why we have shifts. If you don’t do your job, you get burned. Now let’s hope to dear Jesus this isn't another acid slug.”
The lead slaver’s stomach was turning. If it was one of those giant slimy centipedes with mandibles the size of his arm, or another land-cruiser-sized land crab, or even a razor-cat… the razor-cats were the worst.
“Who wants to check?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
Another round of silence.
Trallus opened a crate and pulled out a shred-cannon. Whatever it was, he wasn’t going by himself.
“I’ll go with you.” his longtime business partner told him, taking another cannon off the table next to him. Slapping a magazine in with a brawny hand, he said with a grin, “Let’s bag us a kill, eh?”
The two switched their gun-mounted lights on. 1,000,000 candlepower beams cut through the dark night, sending smaller creatures scattering for the cover of darkness. Sure the lights ruined his night vision, but with a million candlepower, who needed to see in the dark?
The impeded sector was at the worst possible place. It was about 100 meters into the forest and crossed the middle of a sunken bog. Chest-high reeds grew to their waist. The reeds grew flimsily and bent out the way easily, but he worried about razor-cats. Anything could sneak up on them in this mess.
The line passed right over the middle of a pond and Trallus swore to himself he’d break the arm of the man who put it running through here. He and his friend circled the low area, shining their lights down in the middle of the pond. Whatever it was had to be in there.
The pond wasn‘t big, maybe 10 meters across, but anything could hide down in that. Who knew what was in there?
“What possessed them to put a sensor-line across that mess?” yelled his friend.
“God knows. We’re going to give them a perimeter class when get back. No more crossing ponds. This is exactly the type of thing I’ve been talking about.”
His friend nodded an assent.
They circled the pond on opposite sides, shining their lights down into the waters. An eel slithered out of the murky water and Trallus thought for a moment he saw a cat in the bushes next to him, but it turned out to be a stump. 5 minutes later, they made a unanimous decision to walk back to camp. There wasn’t anything in the pond.
His friend started back from the other side of the sinkhole as Trallus turned back to camp, going ahead. What had that stupid thing been? He hoped it died in that pond for making him leave the relative comfort of his shelter. He looked back to see what was taking his friend so long.
"Hey, did you see that stump back there?" he asked, turning to his friend.
Nothing.
Scowling, Trallus swept his light across the swaying reeds back to where his friend had been standing moments ago. He was gone. Not even a sound, though who could hear over this rain?
A chill ran down his spine and Trallus swore in a dozen different languages as he fumbled for the com on his hip. He was going to get a search party out here right this second and-
WHAP!
Oh, fuck, that hurt. He was hit.
Trallus stumbled off his feet and fell down in a lump on something slimy. He had been hit in back. Snaking his arm underneath him, through some sticky goo, he pulled something like a thorn out of his lumbar region. Through swimming vision, he recognized it with another chill: It was a dart.
Suddenly, a dark form swam into view from the swaying grass. It stepped forwards, smoothly; like a predator.
Trallus raised the com to his lips and had nearly pressed the thumb stud when his wrist was crushed into the ground beneath the stiff heel of a boot.
A voice cut through the swishing of the rain like steel through butter.
“In case you missed the memo, slaving has been illegal in the Federation for about 200 years.”
As Trallus’ vision dimmed, the dark outline of a head met the night sky.
The face lowered as the figure bent to one knee. What did he want?
Then the face met the light from his dropped shred-cannon. It was terrifying. It wasn’t the scars, though they were piss-your-pants scary. It wasn’t the dark eyes, hair, and heavy brow. It was the expression. Total coldness. How could anyone be that detached? This… boy, he couldn’t have been older than 20, had just killed him and he looked like he was using a vending machine.
Trallus spent his final moments in stark terror.
The voice came again, it was more like a whisper this time, barely audible over the rain. “But I think you knew that.”
Trallus died.
Rodax Kalithrim rose to his feet in a smooth motion. This was child’s play. The fools had no idea that they were under attack. This was a sanctuary world, no ships were ever supposed to land on it. The slavers… they had to go. He had seen the last site. These men were disgusting. Anyone who would intrude on the poor, innocent farmers that these people were and do those things…
He let the anger drain with the falling rain.
Keep cool, Rodax.
He loved the rain. It muted his sound, it provided cover like that pond he had hid in, and it made him feel… alive. He liked the rain.
Rodax raised his rifle and squinted down the sight. It was like staring down a highway of information. Lights and graphs; right now, he was concerned only with the red + at the end and where it hovered. People always chided him on his rifle. They told him it was more cannon than rifle. 3 barrels made it a cannon for them.
His main barrel fired rounds a centimeter across. The other two were scatterguns. They fired together, putting interesting shapes into his shoulder via the butt-stock, spitting out a storm of razor blades; thick ones.
There was too much foliage between camp and him. He couldn’t get a good sight picture.
Lowering his rifle, Rodax moved swiftly through the underbrush. He arrived at the end of the row of cages. He looked towards camp, making sure the men he had removed weren’t being missed by their buddies. Then he crept up behind the cage and knelt down at the side. Even with the night and the pouring rain, the occupants had noticed his approach, if they’d been sleeping at all.
“I’m here to help.” Rodax pointed to himself. “If you-” he pointed to them. “Be quiet.” he pinched his lips. “You” he pointed to them again. “Go free.” he pointed to the forest.
It took the 5 loincloth-clad men about 3 seconds to decide he was on the level. One of them murmured in a hushed voice to wake people in the cage beside his.
Rodax raised a finger and pointed to the pre-fab structure standing 30 meters away and mimed a series of recoils from his large cannon, then gave them the thumbs up.
One of them smiled back. one looked hesitant, and one scowled, but Rodax was satisfied they’d got the message.
Rodax stayed bent and hurried into the jungle, stepping around a large, thorny flower. He’d already been bit- that’s right, bit- by one and he didn’t plan on it again. Circling around the slaver’s camp, Rodax hoped no one noticed him. Furthermore, he hoped no additional sensors were present. He blinked in a sequence and his already unnaturally sharp vision, switched over to a bright collage of colors: Greens and blues for colder; orange and red for warmer. Infrared.
His biological eyes had been lost 3 years ago to the sharp claws of a Slash Rat. The "eyes" he had now were better than anything else he'd ever had.
Crap.
One of the slavers stepped from the interior of the building and squinted out into the night.
“Hey, where the fuck are Trallus and Dipshit?”
Rodax ducked back into the jungle and splashed another 90 degrees around the large building, bent at the waist.
He heard someone use their com to try and raise their missing companions.
Good luck.
Coming to an ideal location, Rodax hopped over an animal den and stepped around a tree, throwing his rifle back over a shoulder. Squishing down on one knee, Rodax raised his left gauntlet. Squinting through one eye, he trained his wrist-rocket launcher at the pre-fabricated building’s center mass.
“Cleared for takeoff.” he muttered, squeezing the activation stud.
A rocket the width of his index finger and the length half again whisked from his wrist with a whiz. It shot through the air at 200 meters per second and punched a neat hole right through the thin plastic wall of the building.
Fortunately, the detonator was sensitive enough that it detonated, though not before entering the chest of one slaver.
BOOM.
The concussion, magnified in the closed quarters of the building, destroyed the structure in one shot. Bits of plastic rained down on the forest for a kilometer as did several human body fragments. A leg landed behind Rodax and was pulled into the den he had just jumped over by a large hairy claw.
That's nice.
Rodax charged through the shredded forest and into the smoking camp. Bodies, bodies, and more bodies.
He heard a large crash behind him and whisked his gun around.
There was somebody left. He blinked back into normal vision and noted the remaining lizard-being. It was obviously quite sentient from the way it had trained an energy pistol at him.
Rodax ducked and fired his own rifle.
Lizard Boy’s pistol sputtered and didn’t do anything. A conveniently timed misfire, how quaint. Rodax’s rifle, however, was not impeded by the pouring rain. Lizard-Boy took a round to the face and was punched off its feet and onto its back.
Rodax nodded at the lizard being and slung his cannon back over his shoulder. That had been… interesting. He looked around again at the enormous mess his rocket had caused. Must have hit a fuel tank. Good thing too, because there had been a bunch of targets.
Glancing over at the caged prisoners, he was delighted to see that all of them were still in reasonably good condition, considering the situation.
Rodax pulled a hip-pouch open and pulled out a pair of plasma-shears.
Time to get to work on those cages.
He had just reached the first one, inhabited by no less than three very beautiful young ladies when one of them pointed back behind Rodax with a look of terror.
He turned just in time to see lizard boy swinging a jagged piece of metal straight for his head. He ducked just in time to get clipped on the nose with it. He then lashed out with his leg, in time to catch lizard-boy in the stomach. Lizard-boy went flying.
Fuck, he was sure he’d hit the beast. He’d seen the impact splat from the round, hadn’t he?
The lizard righted itself and came charging at him. Yes, there was the mark on its head. Belial, if the lizard didn’t have a hard head.
The thing swiped at him with a large claw and Rodax just managed to jump back out of its path. Then it swiped at him with a foot, followed by a tail.
Rodax took the claw against his leg: very painful, and took the tail to his obliques. Even with the combat armor there, it still knocked his wind out and hurled him back into a puddle. He rolled displacing a large swath of mud, vaguely aware of the screaming girls behind him.
Just what he needed, an audience.
The lizard was on top of him before he was even to his feet. He had but time to cross his arms in front of his face and kick out with both legs.
The lizard-being fell back with a snarl and Rodax threw a grenade after it. It landed at about the same place and time as his grenade and was engulfed in the explosion.
“Screw me sideways.” Rodax muttered as the lizard arced through the air. It should have been vaporized, all it was doing was going for the inanest ride of its life.
He reached his hand up over his shoulder and grabbed the grip of his cannon rotating it down in front of him. He switched it over to full auto and started running towards the lizard. The second it landed, he was firing a stream of rounds after it.
“Where do POS freaks like you come from?” he growled as the lizard rolled up into a ball, the rounds just bouncing off its insanely durable hide.
Rodax wished he had put armor-piercing rounds into his gun. But how was he supposed to know about this stupid thing would be here?
His gun clicked on empty and the lizard got to its feet, running after him.
Rodax gritted his teeth and turned around.
No, you’re not running away. You’re making a tactical withdrawal.
He frowned.
Okay, you’re running away; but how do you kill a lizard?
Rodax looked to his side as he ran along the cages. Those 3 girls were still watching him through their parted fingers. He felt a twinge of anger for the circumstances that had led to this. They should have been back in their village making mats or cooking deer. Not sitting here all miserable and cold and… cold.
Cold.
Rodax smiled at the simplicity of it all. Glancing over his shoulder, he perceived the lizard but a few paces behind him and gaining. Well, okay, then, it would work.
He gripped another one of the grenades on his chest and made a 1-step change in direction. He pulled the pin on his grenade and round-housed the lizard off its feet and to the ground.
It got to its feet and hissed at him. “Foolisssh human-”
That was as far as it got before Rodax interrupted him, pointing at the lizard’s feet. “Wrong.”
The cryo-grenade activated at that moment draining the air of all its heat energy, lowering the temperature close to absolute 0. The air, mud, and rain falling into the sphere of cold also froze solid. Raindrops turned into bits of ice as they entered the sphere clattering down upon the frozen mud-puddles, still rippling from where the lizard had stood. As for lizard-boy.
“How‘s that feel on your balls?” Rodax asked as he drew a pistol and fired a round.
Lizard-boy shattered into a thousand pieces and Rodax smiled.
The grenade finished its effect and the rain turned back into rain. The ground stayed frozen, but it wouldn’t be for long. The ice chips were already melting.
“Now that's going to smell in the morning.” he griped.
Walking back to the cages, Rodax picked his laser shears up off the ground and walked to the girls’ cage. “Would any you care to give me your com numbers?” he asked.
They all smiled, not understanding a word of course, but grateful nonetheless.
Rodax freed every captured native that day all by himself. He let them all go and then boarded his ship. All in a day’s work. A hefty bonus was for certain with this job. He had recognized at least 4 of them as “wanted“.
He booted his star-ship to life and found a strange message waiting for him on his computer.
Gender:
Points: 2399
Reviews: 130