Okay, so this is the first third of my epic novel I spent two years writing.
You don't really need to read the prologue, but it's here if you do. http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/topic21141.html
And would someone please tell me how to make the links look pretty instead of the mess as displayed above?
Chapter One
He’s the one who gives his body as a weapon of the war
And without him all this killing can’t go on
He’s the universal soldier
And he really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
A few standard days later, Rodax sat impatiently in a cold metal chair. He looked vaguely interested around the extravagantly decorated hall.
Politician’s offices are all the same; even on Antina.
Drumming his fingers on the table, he looked over the miscellany on the shelves and tables. The Governor had accumulated quite a vast amount of useless junk over the years. Shelves upon shelves were full of different little trinkets. Most of them were boring artsy paintings and globs of pottery. Every 8 pictures or so, there was a little statuette of himself. Pictures of him, pictures of his wife, pictures of… well, hello there. Could that be the Governor’s daughter?
Looking closer, Rodax figured it had to be. Aside from having Baalith’s nose, nothing to be proud of in itself, she had nearly half the portraits to herself. Rodax zoomed his implants in on the pictures and glanced at them in closer detail.
She was hot, he could say that much without looking to hard. He smirked and looked away, tapping his knee. He could see it now: Rodax Kalithrim, wanted dead or alive in 27 planetary systems, and the daughter of Governor Baalith. He snickered.
Why was he here anyway? He pursed his lips and thought about last week. After returning to his ship, he had found a message waiting for him. Apparently, there was a threat against someone’s life who was of importance to Governor Baalith. The man who had called him, Governor Baalith’s aide actually -the Governor probably thought he was too important to make things like calls to lowly mercenaries- had not been able to say much more than that on the message machine.
Yes, Aide Glan had probably called because the Governor was too self-important. Baalith was that way, damn him.
Leaning back in the chair, Rodax stared out the broad window to check for hostiles as part of his “Keep Rodax Alive As Long As Possible” plan. At least he was doing it now; embassies always gave him the creeps. He squinted and zoomed in on a suspicious looking character that was picking his nose on the street corner. The guy looked okay, so Rodax continued scanning the sparsely populated sidewalk for hostiles.
Seeing no obvious threat, he leaned back and glanced at his chrono.
According to his wrist-chrono, which served a plethora of other functions, he still had several STM [Standard Minutes] before the Governor was due. Rodax sighed and got to his feet and started walking around the table, absent-mindedly clicking his heels on the polished floor, and used the opportunity to get a closer look at the pictures of his daughter.
He looked over his shoulder just to be safe and stuffed one in his chest pocket. Baalith had too many of them anyway. He wouldn’t miss just one picture.
“So what’s on the menu, Rodax?” He asked himself.
“I don’t know.” he replied. “Probably going to end up breaking things; breaking things and killing people.”
“That’s what you do best.”
Terrorists, narcotics dealers, slavers, other assassins, world leaders, tyrants, thieves, kidnappers… you name one, he’d killed them.
Technically, he considered, he could be considered a terrorist. He used violence and psychological methods to intimidate the scum of the galaxy. He raised a finger and reminded himself that he had never and never would engage the innocent of the galaxy, though; that was part of his code.
He wandered around the table several more times, dying of boredom.
Just as he was getting ready to go out the door and see what crisis could possibly be keeping the Governor, the metal door slid open and in walked the famous politician’s aide.
****, still no Governor Baalith.
“Ah, how good to see you again.” the aide addressed Rodax.
He was a little shorter and quite younger than the politician. Glan had a bit of a stoop and his shoulders were rolled forward. However, the man had better character than his employer. Glan pushed a length of maroon hair out of his eyes and back behind an ear.
Rodax nodded, replying with a shrug. “Oh? You guys like shelling out credits for me to do your dirty work?”
Glan seemed a bit taken aback at this.
“Chill, Glan, I’m messing with you. It’s nice to see you too.”
Rodax hardly mean this, he hated politicians, but what the heck. It was better than giving Glan the bird and telling him to piss up a rope.
“M-hmm.” Glan was still frowning. “How did your most recent contract go?”
Pulling his shoulders up, Rodax cracked his upper neck. “As well as any contract can go.”
It had gone pretty well, as far as Rodax was concerned. he didn’t need any more prosthetics than he already had and his bank account was all in the black. Then there had been the fun and games with Lizard Man, he wasn’t going to forget that any time soon. The chunk taken out of his nose was an obvious reminder every time he looked in the mirror.
Aide Glan nodded nervously and began. “Well. I suppose it would be best to get down to the point.” he clenched his jaw a few times and shrugged. ”Perhaps I’ll start at the beginning. You see, in case you haven’t been keeping up with current Antina news-“
“I haven’t.” he interrupted.
Glan swallowed. “Yes, well, just recently Mr. Baalith enacted a bit of legislation, bringing to an end a border dispute between a moon and the main planet in the system, on which you are currently standing. The moon’s general population wished for freedom and, as you can probably guess, didn’t get it. They are far too close to have an separate sovereign government. We are to remain under a single rule. That makes the most sense, of course.”
To tell the truth, it didn’t make much sense to Rodax. There were plenty of other planets that had up to four different world powers fighting for control. It was nonsense to not give them their freedom… but then, Rodax didn’t know the whole story.
Glan kept going. “Naturally, one particular group of people, they call themselves the ‘Liberation of Rayton Front’, are leading the bandwagon to evict our local government from the moon. They have held all manner of protests and pickets to impede the forces of justice. Recently, there have been attacks against our ships.
“To make matters worse, this moon is the benefactor of our system’s chief export, Sylvanna. You're familiar the spice of course?”
“They harvest it here?” Rodax asked.
Glan nodded. “On the moon, chiefly. The climate is perfect. The Sylvanna is vital to our economy and even though the violence has just begun, it’s already interfering with the market. The delayed shipments and the vaporized ones are putting a rather distasteful shade on our otherwise lucrative business and driving up costs galaxy-wide.”
Well that makes a lot of sense. Rodax thought to himself. Little moon has big bucks but has to share it with its planet. Big influential planet doesn’t want to go bankrupt when little moon goes indie. No wonder Baalith declined giving them their independence.
Nodding, Rodax replied, “So which groups have claimed responsibility for these attacks?”
“We don’t know entirely, the only contact we have with the terrorists are untraceable communications from an unverified source threatening us to get out off of ‘their‘ moon.” Glan shrugged cavalierly. “At least the violence against our people is bolstering support for our side.”
“And that’s always a good thing.” Rodax scorned.
Glan seemed to be taken aback by this and frowned, catching up with himself. “But not at the expense of innocent life, naturally.”
Rodax rolled his eyes and looked up as the door slid open once more. Through the door walked Governor Baalith himself. It occurred to Rodax that the man looked rather unbecoming with his thin eyebrows, wispy dark hair, and sharply pointed nose matching the goatee over a weak chin. Baalith looked as irritable and bothered as ever.
Rodax couldn’t help but smile at this. He didn’t care for Baalith, one whit; but Baalith paid better than any other politician so Rodax stuck it out.
Baalith actually looked startled to see Rodax there: a bad sign. In this business, surprise was not good on the faces of potential employers.
“Oh.” he recoiled slightly. “How good to see you, Mercenary. And why are you here?” Baalith grumbled. He didn‘t seem happy at all to see Rodax.
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Okay, does this length work better?
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