Chapter 1056: Enough Excitement (Patreon)

The double doors to the command centre were flung open and Jakaar stormed through.

“What in the Reaper’s left nut is going on?” he demanded as his staff looked up warily from their terminals.

Farrah strolled in after as if there weren’t two stern diamond-rankers hovering at her back, and she took in the room. It was an odd mix of archaic and modern, a library gutted of shelves and filled with monitoring stations for the planetary outpost and the fleet in orbit. A few loose shelf panels and discarded books were still laying around in corners. The command staff were acting like navy personnel at stations, but dressed like they’d just plundered a clothes donation bin.

Along with the staff at the monitors, a number of the captains from the earlier meeting were present. Their outfits were no less outlandish but better put together. They were gathered in front of a wall monitor, watching the live feed from a dimension ship in orbit around the planet, with much of Jakaar’s fleet in view. A smile teased at Farrah’s lips.

The dimension ships on the display were variously boxy or sleek, but conforming to a broadly similar configuration of being obviously vehicles, longer than they were high or wide. They ranged in size from orbital shuttles to battleships, but one object was far larger. An icosahedron, vaguely orb-like but angular object comprised of twenty triangular sides. The edges were dark metal that seems to absorb light, while the face of each triangle was made of cloud material, wisps drifting off like steam. In the middle of each face was a nebulous eye of blue and orange.

“What is that thing?” Jakaar demanded. “Some kind of ship? It looks like one of those monstrosities that messengers summon.”

“We’re not entirely sure, Admiral. The fleet was approaching Jota’s ship—”

“Jota’s ship?” Jakaar asked.

“The ship Jota stole,” the man hurriedly corrected. “The stolen ship started producing a mist that expanded well beyond any of the ships there, including the one it came from, until it took on the form you see.”

“Did everyone just float out there watching, or did anyone consider shooting at it?”

“We unloaded on it as it was forming, Admiral but…”

“But what?”

“All our ships stopped attacking. The crews all reported being affected by an aura that convinced them that attacking it was a very bad idea.”

“An aura did that?”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“An aura from a cloud?”

“There are numerous recorded deep space monsters that take cloud form, sir. And deep space monsters—”

“I know all about deep space monsters. But you said this thing was sent at us by Jota.”

“It wasn’t Jota,” Farrah said, drawing all eyes to her. “I told you that I represent someone whose power I have some ability to make use of, within the scope of his domain.”

She nodded at the screen.

“That would be the scope of his domain.”

Jakaar was not an attractive man. He was not well-dressed, well shaven or all that recently bathed, but he was large. He strode across the room to the much smaller woman and loomed over her, both physically and with his aura. She showed no sign of being intimidated either way.

“If I kill you,” he growled, “that thing goes away?”

“I just told you that it wasn’t my power; you need to listen more. And deodorise. Have you ever heard of crystal wash? I know a guy, but he doesn’t like giving any up.”

He gave her a leering grin.

“I would say your glib tongue will get you killed, but you’re diamond-rank now, and you’d just come back. What that tongue will get you now won’t kill you, you’ll just wish it had.”

Farrah had to lean back to lock eyes with the pirate.

“Bluster. You seem rattled, Admiral. You pass yourself off as a sleaze, but I don’t think so. You’ve run this fleet too well for too long, and I think you’re starting to realise that you’ve gotten too greedy. That you’re caught up in something that will turn you and yours into collateral damage. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you really do have the goods and I’m about to be proven very wrong. You’ve got a fleet of ships pointed at that thing out there. Try blowing it up and see what it gets you.”

Jakaar’s lascivious expression vanished, replaced with amused respect as he took a step back.

“You’ve got a set of brass balls, Farrah Hurin. Ever consider a pirate’s life?”

It was her turn to grin.

“Not enough excitement.”

“You don’t think being a pirate is exciting?”

“I have high standards. You hide from the things I fight.”

“The thing you’re fighting today is me.”

“I’m not fighting you, Jakaar. You just don’t see what I’m trying to save you from yet. Have your ships attack that thing out there and you might begin to understand.”

“I didn’t last this long by fighting on someone else’s terms.”

He turned back to his staff.

“How are you going on tracking the silver-haired woman?”

“Sophie,” Farrah called out. “Her name is Sophie.”

Jakaar glanced back before shaking his head.

“How are you going on tracking Sophie?”

“None of our people could keep track of her, Admiral. Not with how fast she moves.”

“That’s why I’m not asking the fools who were chasing her. If she’s moving that fast, she’s practically ordnance. Search the point defence tracker logs for any high-velocity objects the size of a person moving in non-linear patterns, starting with the time and place she vanished.”

The staffer blinked in surprise.

“That’s really smart, boss.”

“That’s why I’m the one with the pointy hat.”

“You know you can just buy pointy hats, right?”

Jakaar raised his eyebrows.

“…which I would never do. Checking the logs, Admiral.”

While the staffer worked, Jakaar turned his gaze back to the monitor and the strange object covered in eyes.

“It’s a ship, isn’t it?” he asked. “Cloud construct.”

“It is today,” Farrah said. “And yes.”

“Don’t see a lot of cloud constructs rated for dimensional travel, or that large. That’s a fortress class ship. Normally only the big players use those.”

“And what does that tell you, Jakaar?”

“I know what you want it to tell me. But if you were a big player, you wouldn’t be playing with me.”

“I already told you I’m not. The question is how many people you lose figuring that out.”

“Boss, I’ve tracked her. She made a beeline for Bingleton. It’s a town on the west continent’s southern peninsula.”

“What kind of mercenary names a town Bingleton? Is it one of ours?”

“Yes, sir. Captain Clacker holds it.”

“Captain Clacker?”

“He’s the one with the lip thing, sir.”

“Right. Comms, have him report in. Put it on the wall monitor.”

The image of the fleet was replaced with a hold screen. After half a minute of waiting, a scowl overtook Jakaar’s face.”

“Bloody pirate discipline,” he muttered. “They should have someone at the comm station at all—”

The screen switched to a live feed, although it was hard to see what was happening. It was a dark room obscured by a bloody hand right in front of the image pick up, clawing at the screen.

“ADMIRAL!” came a scream from presumably the owner of the hand. “There’s something—”

The hand was yanked out of site, its owner speaking no more, but there was still no shortage of sound. They could now see the dim interior of a building and the muffled sounds from outside. The sizzle of powers being blasted; the fierce yells of and confusion. More than anything else, there were screams of pain, terror and panic.

“It’s in the shadows! It’s in the shadows!”

“It’s bleeding! How is a golem bleeding?”

“No, I’m not infected! I was attacked by something, don’t­ aaarRGGHH!”

The sound of slow, measured footstep came from within the room. Something dark moved in front of the camera, the room’s scant light growing dimmer around in. A pair of eyes that weren’t quite eyes opened; blue and orange nebulas that seemed vast but astronomically distant in some endless void.

The connection shut off, leaving Jakaar and his pirates staring at a blank screen.

***

Farrah was somewhere between prisoner and guest, treated with courtesy but always with two thuggish guards on hand. On the sixth day of her presence in Jakaar’s palace, she was led back to the control room. When the doors opened, the staff were quietly whispering into communication devices or working at their consoles in a frenzy. Jakaar sat in the middle of the room, in a throne-like chair that had been brought in since her last visit. He was watching on the wall monitor as someone panned a camera across a city street.

“Same as the others, nothing but stains in the whole city. What the stains are, I don’t want to know. If that’s blood, something real bad happened to it, Admiral. My crew are getting creeped out and we’d all like to go, if that’s okay.”

“Yes, move on to the next site. Callantro is close to you and has gone dark as well, so head there.”

“Admiral, I was hoping that we could come in for a spell. There’s a remnant aura in these dead towns, like they’ve been tainted somehow. The rats and flies won’t come near whatever’s left of the people here. It’s getting to the lads, boss, and these are pirates, not soldiers. We keep making them go to these places and they’re going to start running off.”

“Go on to the next town, Captain Clintock. Our diamond-rankers should have started resurrecting now, but they haven’t. We have to find who or what is doing this.”

“Begging your pardon, but do we? We came here to hunt people, but we gave up on that days ago. All we’re doing now is trying to avoid being hunted ourselves, and it ain’t working. This job is a bust, Admiral. I say we cut our losses before we have more ships than surviving captains to command them.”

Jakaar turned in his chair to stare at Farrah, who gave a casual shrug. He scowled and turned back to the screen.

“I’ll consider it. Cut the feed.”

The screen went blank and Jakaar got to his feet. He left the staff to their tasks and strode out of the command centre. Farrah quietly trailed behind, along with her thuggish escorts.

“What’s out there?” Jakaar asked. “What is doing this to my people?”

“You were warned, Admiral. It doesn’t matter who or what is out there anymore. At this point, it’s just a question of how many people pay for your stubbornness.”

He stopped and sighed wearily, still keeping his back to her.

“How is he keeping them dead? They’re diamond rankers. The earliest one should have resurrected by now.”

“There are many ways, Admiral. Draining all the remnant life force from the corpse works well. Takes a lot longer to rebuild when you’re starting from scratch. You can use a power for that, but the best way is the right summon or familiar. Swarms that feed on life force. There’s a lot of bad ways to die, but there’s something special about being buried in creatures as they devour you alive. Feeding on your vitality, snatching it away, piece by piece. It’s something only diamond rankers can fully experience as even gold-rankers only last so long. And when they do finally come back, months or even years later, they’re never quite the same.”

Jakaar slowly turned to face her, realisation and horror on his face.

“We are pirates. We rob and plunder and pillage. We destroy, and yes, we kill. But not like this. We might take over a city, but don’t wipe it out. Kill every man, woman and child in it. The person who sent you here is leaving them empty. Not a single soul left behind. Stained, as if what happened there had marked the place forever. My people may be in charge, but they’re only a fraction of the population. Most of the victims are civilians. Innocents, as much as they can be in a place like this. How many of them are you willing to scour from the face of this planet? How many children?”

“That’s not up to me. He’s one man against your entire fleet, after all. He needs to take extreme measures.”

“And you are willing to accept that?”

“Yes, Admiral. I am.”

***

The small craft hangar of Jakaar’s flagship had an entrance open to space, with only a force field containing the atmosphere. Farrah looked out that gap as the last batch of ships vanished, transitioning into the astral. The evacuation was almost done, Jakaar’s ship being the only one left orbiting the planet.

“In the end, he didn’t show his face,” Jakaar said, then frowned as a white stone arch rose from the deck. It filled with gold, silver and blue light, becoming a portal that Jakaar scowled at.

“That shouldn’t be possible in here,” he muttered.

“I—”

“Warned me, yes,” Jakaar said bitterly. “I am more than familiar with your constant refrain.”

He gestured at the portal.

“Is he finally going to show himself?”

“Not to you, Admiral.”

“Then that portal is for you.”

“Eventually, but your people first.”

“None of my people are going into that thing.”

“No, Admiral. They’re coming out.”

As she spoke, a line of bedraggled pirates came shuffling out of the portal. They were smeared with dirt and draped in ragged clothes. They all showed signs of minor wounds that any gold or diamond-ranker should have healed in moments, yet the scapes and cuts lingered.

“The man hunting you is not naturally inclined to mercy,” Farrah said. “Not in his powers and certainly not when you go after his friends. But he tries. We had a friend who died some time ago, and before he died, he gave the man hunting you a sword. That sword has the power to grant mercy, turning power that would kill into power that merely restrains.”

“You’re saying that…”

“Yes. None of the people in those towns and cities died. The civilians were happy to be liberated and your people were all gold and diamond-rankers. Hard to kill. Their failure to resurrect wasn’t because they were being fed to his familiar, although they certainly could have been. They didn’t resurrect because they never died.”

“How did you pull that off without any of my people realising?”

“They had help,” Captain Clintock said, striding out of the portal, shoving past the still emerging line of pirates.

“You turned on me?” Jakaar asked. “I would have sworn you were loyal.”

Clintock’s visage blurred, replaced with that of Belinda.

“He was, but he died some time ago. I don’t hold mercy in the same regard as our friend.”

“How did you get rid of whole cities of people without anyone noticing? You can’t send that many through a portal.”

“Not a regular one,” Farrah said. “I don’t know if you’ve been counting, but more diamond-rankers have come out of that portal than should be even close to possible. That’s because it’s not really a portal, it’s a dimensional aperture.”

“To where?”

“An astral kingdom.”

“You lied. You do serve a messenger.”

“No, he’s just a guy who happens to have an astral kingdom.”

“He can be a bit messengery,” Belinda conceded. “The aura, the predilection for tyranny.”

“He’s not that bad, Lindy.”

“He has whole messenger armies. Armies, plural.”

Jakaar watched the exchange with confusing, feeling completely enervated. From the misery of failure and the loss of so many people, he was now watching his supposedly dead fleet members shuffle out, battered but alive. Farrah turned her gaze on him, her expression turning hard.

“I like you, Admiral, to my surprise, but that doesn’t mean we’ll overlook what you are. The things your fleet has done. You don’t really deserve mercy, but he’ll give it for the simple reason that he can. I hope you’ll think about that, the next time you find the balance of people’s lives in your hands.”

“Who is he?” Jakaar asked. “Who is this man you came here to save me from?”

“I told you that his name would mean nothing to you, Admiral. It still won’t.”

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