Once Broken, Chapter 48 (Patreon)

Tristan woke moments before his muzzle hit the loamy soils, the jolt of pain bringing him to full attention. He was on his knees—face in the ground, ass in the air. An accident, or were they trying to humiliate him? He still had his pants on.

He found his wrists were bound behind him when he tried to move them. He rolled to his side, watching two humans carrying a chair away. The attachments to it were tubes from connected to a filtration unit at the back; the armband had been dropped on the seat. A fluid cryo-chair. Someone had assembled a portable model. Clever.

He continued to his back, ignoring the pain the weight on his arms caused. He ran a finger against the binding now that they were hidden. Thin, flat—not technological. Quick restraints, the kind the Law carried when they had a lot of people to arrests. He scratched it with a claw and left a mark in the material. That was very good.

He tensed and sat. Before him were six mercs, big men in medium armor. Each pointed a Dorac F-21 at him. He nodded in approval. Those had a lot of stopping power, but they had to remember to stagger the shots between them to cover the five seconds the weapon took to cycle. A glance over his shoulder showed him three other mercs, plus one Samalian. His experience taught that whoever looked different was in charge, so he turned himself around. Those mercs were just as large, the lone woman in the group managing to be slightly larger.

He studied the Samalian; the mercs weren’t important. He’d had a rough life recently. Half the dark-brown fur on his body was gone, the skin badly scared. Not gunshots, more like burns. It looked fresh enough he should be in a hospital.

So, who was he? The hate in his eyes indicated they’d met before, but Tristan didn’t remember hurting a Samalian like him. Not recently enough to have left him with those injuries. There had been a handful of Samalians on the Sayatoga, but those had been hallucinations. Samalians he’d encountered getting off-planet, maybe the occasional one he’d met in space.

“You must really be happy with yourself.” The voice made Tristan pay attention. He knew that voice.

He looked at the face, imagined it with fur, those light-brown eyes, the sneer on his scarred lips. It couldn’t be. “Justin?”

Justin beamed. “You should see your face. Did you really think your flunky was going to manage to kill me when you never have?”

Tristan smiled, happiness filling him. “You’re alive!” His little brother had survived. If his hand had been free, he would have rushed to hug him. “How? Alex said Anders killed you.”

Justin snorted. “Like throwing me in vacuum is enough to kill me. Did you really think having him use your old trick would work now, when it didn’t then? I took courses in vacuum survival. Of course, I couldn’t heat up the ship, so frostbite did this to me.” He indicated his scarred flesh.

“I’m sorry, Justin,” Tristan said, and found he meant it. Justin had always been so proud of the way he looked. To be disfigured like this was—

“I don’t want your pity,” Justin growled. “I’m going to make him pay, just like I am going to make you pay for all these attempts to kill me.”

“I wasn’t trying to ki—”

“Liar! That’s all you’ve ever thought about! From the moment you realized father cared about me more than you, you’ve wanted me dead!” He stopped. For a full second he didn’t move, then he wiped the froth off the corner of his mouth. “That’s not important. I’m going to make him suffer, and after that I’m going to have my fur—”

“He’s dead.”

Justin stared at him. “How can he be dead?” 

“I killed him, how else do you think he’d die?”

“You killed him?” The disbelief turned to anger. “How dare you! I should’ve been the one to kill him! Not you, me! You just can’t stop yourself, can you? You’re always taking what’s mine!”

Tristan watched his brother. He wanted to ask what had happened to him, but his state of mind was such Tristan couldn’t guess how he’d respond.

“Why?” Justin asked. “Why would you take that from me?” 

“He hurt Alex.”

“That’s the second time you said that name.” His brows furrowed. “Was he one of the humans in the arena with you? The one with that mohawk? Or the one in gray and red? Not the woman, right? You never went for those. One thing that was mine and mine alone.”

Tristan tried to recall the arena. It had been dark. There had been light, many copies of Alex. He shuddered. So many of them he’d had to kill, who’d tried to kill him. There had also been a Samalian there.

“Wait. The giant head, that was real?” He chuckled at Justin’s surprised expression. “Sorry, I was coming down from some hard drugs. I still have trouble telling what was real and what wasn’t on that ship.”

“Yes,” Justin replied darkly, “that was me.”

Tristan nodded. “You always did like making yourself larger than life,” he said, not meaning to.

Justin’s eyes flashed with rage, but he regained control. His brother was too far gone then. Maybe most of that was an act, but Tristan didn’t think so. Justin had never been good at acting in other ways than himself.

“You’re one to speak,” Justin said. “Most-wanted in the universe! How’s that for pretension?”

“I never made that claim. Others did.”

“Still, you enjoyed it. You always liked the praise. Being Father’s favorite. You always had to steal the attention from me.”

“That’s because Father caged me when he thought I didn’t do good enough, so yes, in that regard, better you than me. But it wasn’t about you. I didn’t care about you back then,” he said, only to realize the words were a lie after they were out of his mouth.

Justin waved that aside. “If I’d told the universe you weren’t on the Sayatoga, that fame of yours would have been your death. Every bounty hunter would have been after you. Even the one you used during your rescue.” Tristan didn’t even try to recall who Justin referred to, and his brother continued. “That would have cost you your revenge.” 

He looked around and caught sight of metal in the distance, the straight line of the top of something, bars going down from there. A shiver traveled down his spine.

“What’s with them?” Tristan asked, forcing his attention away. Hopefully Justin hadn’t noticed he’d seen it, or his reaction. The mercs were watching him and Justin, relaxed, rifles pointed at the ground. He glanced over his shoulder, and none of them were that attentive. He found the mark he made on his restraint and ran a claw over it again.

“Do you really think I’m going to take a chance with you?” Justin spun in place, hands in the air. “Come see the Great Tristan! Come watch him escape from yet another trap! Come see him outwit his simpleton of a brother!” He faced Tristan and snarled. “Not this time.”

Justin straightened and looked around, frowning. “What are you doing?” he asked the mercs. They looked at one another, but remained silent. “Come on, come on,” Justin said impatiently. “One of you speak up, tell me what you’re doing.”

“Standing guard, sir.”

Justin nodded. “Standing guard.” He smiled. “You definitely have the ‘standing’ part right.” He approached the man who spoke. “Now, about the guarding part. What did I tell you to guard?”

“Him, sir?”

Justin nodded again. “Very good. Now, can you explain to me why it is your rifle is pointing at the ground, if you’re supposed to guard him?”

“Sir?”

Justin sighed. “Do you find it’s impossible to get good help anymore?” he asked Tristan.

Tristan shrugged. “I work alone for a reason.”

“Maybe I should give that a try one day.” He spun and slashed the man’s throat open with his claws. “Get your guns up! I want them pointed at him, always at him! Do you have any idea what he can do while you’re distracted? He can kill each and every one of you!”

Tristan watched the man clutch his throat, ignoring the rifles pointed at his head. “You just killed one of your men.” He said it matter-of-fact, not to goad Justin, but to study the other’s reaction.

“Yeah, I know. It’s why I always hire a lot of them. Losing a few in the process isn’t as much of an impact then. And with one less person to split the pay with, each one gets a little more, isn’t that right?”

The mercs nodded, but not all of them as enthusiastically. A few realized that Justin wasn’t entirely sane. The two who’d left with the chair returned.

“Where are the others?” Justin asked, stopping the two in their tracks.

They looked at one another, and the thinner one said, “it was just him.”

“No, there was a whole group of them. I told you I wanted them all. They all have to pay.”

“There was only one other in the room with him. You told us how dangerous this one was, so we were going to secure him and go back for the other one; he was busy with something, didn’t even notice we took him. But he must have finished, because he came after us, killed at least a third of us before security showed up. I figured getting him to you was better than not getting any of them.”

Tristan smiled. So it had worked. “Alex is good at killing people.” 

“Another Alex?” Justin asked. “Is there something about the name you like? Or do you just call all your toys ‘Alex’?” 

“Same one. There’s only one Alex for me.”

“Same one?” Justin studied Tristan’s face, searched it. “Are you telling me you didn’t break the one who helped rescue you? How long did it take you to get here? Weeks, months? You were careful all that time?”

“Break him?”

Justin nodded and walked around Tristan. “Humans are so fragile. They’re fun, I’ll give you that.” He looked the woman over, and she barely hid her disgust. “But they never last long.” He sighed. “It’s a never-ending quest, to find one who can keep up with me.”

“No, I haven’t broken him.” Tristan closed his mouth before he could add that wasn’t for lack of trying. He had no pride about how he’d treated Alex over the years, and while he would probably be helped by talking to someone about it, it wasn’t going to be Justin.

“And you didn’t toss him aside? Get bored with him? Humans are so boring.” Justin searched Tristan’s face again. “What is he to you?”

Tristan opened his mouth to give a snide reply, but closed it. In spite of it all, Justin deserved as an answer; he found he didn’t want to sully what Alex was to him, not even with a lie to goad his brother. He took a breath. “Partner. Alex is my partner.”

“Your toy, you mean.”

“No,” Tristan replied with indignation. Couldn’t his brother understand how important Alex was to him? No, he couldn’t, and that was probably a good thing. It would keep Alex safe.

“Then he’s a mark. Someone you twisted around your finger so tightly that he’d have no choice but to come to your rescue if you were ever caught.”

“Yes—no!” Tristan shook his head. He really should have stayed silent, let his brother believe anything he wanted, but this was Alex. “Yes, he rescued me, but no, he isn’t a mark. I care about him.” He smiled. “I really care about him, Justin. I wish you could feel that, feel how good it is to care for someone.”

Justin took a step back, surprise on his face. “Are you telling me that every time you went on about that human you ‘loved’, that was him? And that it wasn’t you being insane or the drugs talking, you actually…” He burst out laughing. “Oh, if only Father could see you now. And to think he always accused me of being the weak one.”

“Here we go again,” Tristan grumbled under his breath.

“It’s true! It was always about you, even when you didn’t steal the attention away from me, it was always ‘why can’t you be as strong as Tristan? Why can’t you be as ruthless as Tristan?’” He motioned to the mercs. “They don’t matter. No one does except for us.” He snorted. “At least I still live by Father’s rules.”

“Oh, come on.” Tristan should shut up, he knew it, but he was so tired of Justin picking and choosing which rules he followed according to how he felt. “Do you know how to strip one of those rifles? How about whatever ship you have? Can you do any repairs on it? Father’s rules aren’t just about us being the only ones who matter. They are about us never needing anyone, ever. That means learning everything that’s needed to function. You think that rule stopped with anything more complex than a wrench? If you weren’t going to learn what’s needed, you should have stayed here.” He nodded toward the cage in the distance. “Lived in his cabin. At least then you’d have been following his rules.”

Justin snorted. “Oh, I learned how to use tools. I learned that there’s only one tool that’s needed in space, and that’s money. With money, you get everything else done for you.”

“How did that go? How hard did all those people you paid fight to keep you alive? How hard did they fight to protect your ship? How hard do you think these mercs are going to fight for you when me and Alex start killing them?”

“Your human isn’t here. It’s just you.”

Tristan looked his brother in the eyes. The confidence he felt wasn’t an act; he’d seen Alex dodge blasts to save him. That had nothing to do with how he’d trained him, and everything to do with how they felt for each other.

“Alex is on his way.”

Justin straightened. “Did anyone follow you?” he asked the thin merc. 

“Of course not,” he answered, but Tristan heard the doubt in the voice. “He was still on the roof fighting the others and those guards. We headed straight here. We went back to the travel lane as early as we could, and matched speed to avoid attracting attention. No one knows we’re here.”

Justin smirked at Tristan and opened his muzzle, only to close it and frown.

“Do you hear it?” Tristan asked.

Justin glared at Tristan, then rounded on the merc, pointing in the distance. “What’s that, if no one followed you?”

“What’s what?” the merc answered, glancing at the dead merc, then looking around, searching for anyone who would back him up against Justin. By the fear in the man’s eyes, Tristan guessed he was on his own. 

“Are you deaf? There’s a ship approaching. I’m missing an ear and I can hear it!”

“There’re only human,” Tristan offered.

“Shut up!” Justin rounded back on the merc. “One job. I gave you one job. Capture my brother, get anyone with him, and come back without being followed. How can you fuck up that one job?”

“Technically,” Tristan said before he realized it, “that’s three jobs.” Justin glared at him.

 “Why do you always have to ruin everything I do?” He grabbed his own head. “Why can’t you just leave me alone for even a minute?”

Tristan canted his head. His brother was definitely over the edge. He might snap at any moment if Tristan didn’t keep him ranting. Fortunately, that was easy to do.

“I was leaving you alone. I’d even forgotten you existed until you came and attacked me.”

“I was protecting myself!”

Tristan smiled. “Justin, I wasn’t coming for you. I never had any interest in you; you’re not that important to me.”

“You killed father!”

“I did, because he deserved it.”

Justin snorted. “He didn’t deserve it. He was just in your way. You could have pushed him aside and left without killing him. You just wanted him dead, like you want me dead.”

“Father’s own rules, Justin: never let a potential threat live. Unlike you, he was a potential threat. But that’s not really why I killed him.”

“I knew it! I knew you hated him! That’s why, just like you hate me.” 

“Of course I hated him. You should too. He abused us.” He’d never had the frame of reference needed to understand it until recently. He hadn’t understood how humans treated their children, and told himself it was because they were humans, not Samalians. But he had to have known, on some level. Why else go out of his way to keep children alive? To keep them from being hurt, if he hadn’t understood the way he was treated was wrong? His time in the Samalian town had shown him that how Samalian parents treated their children wasn’t so different from humans.

He looked at Justin and forgot goading him. He just wanted his brother to understand. “We weren’t his sons. We were animals to be trained.” He nodded to the cage. “He caged us, Justin. What kind of father does that to his children?”

“The kind who wants them to survive!” 

“Justin, Father was a monster.”

“Shut up!” Justin grabbed his head again. “Father loved us! He made sure I would—”

The hover flew over them, so low it ripped branches off the canopy and rained them down.

“He’s out of control,” one of the mercs said.

Tristan clamped down on his fear. He ignored that the hover was too low and too fast, focusing on the fact that it was Alex in it.

Justin smirked. “Looks like you put your faith in the wrong person.” He looked up, the trees settling.

Tristan laughed, gathering a glare from his brother. “Faith? You don’t even know what the word means.”

The hover crashed. It was a nasty sound, the kind that said no one could survive. A few seconds later, the explosion sounded.

Justin opened his mouth—to gloat, most likely—but Tristan silently dared him to do it. He put his entire faith in Alex in his expression, and Justin clamped his muzzle shut.

Justin glanced toward the explosion, then looked at Tristan again. “You four, go check the wreckage.” He hesitated, his eyes not leaving Tristan’s. “Make it the six of you. I don’t care what state they are in, if anyone is still breathing, make it stop.”

“Sir, is that safe?” a merc asked. “You said this guy’s really dangerous.” 

“I gave you an order! Do I need to kill you too, for you to obey it?”

Six of them headed off, grumbling about Samalians and their sanity. Tristan waited. His best estimate placed the crash beyond the river, so they had quite the walk ahead of them. He needed to make sure they were out of hearing range.

Justin smiled at Tristan. “I have no idea what you have planned, but it isn’t going to happen. Whoever that was, they’re going to be dead, if the crash didn’t already do the job.”

Tristan smiled. “You think six highly trained mercs are going to stop Alex? Didn’t you listen to what those two said? He took on all the mercs you sent, plus the building’s security, yet here he is. You should send two more. Then maybe they’ll have a chance.”

“You really think I’m stupid, don’t you?”

Tristan’s made sure his silent smile spoke volumes.

“You’re trying to scare me, so it’ll be just the two of us. You don’t want anyone to hear you beg.”

Tristan laughed. He hadn’t meant to, but what else could he do? “Me, beg? Little Brother, you really have a twisted version of our history.” He saw the slap coming and didn’t move, but he hadn’t expected the claws; those stung.

“You’re the one who doesn’t remember correctly,” Justin snarled. “You keep cheating by bringing others into our private arguments!”

“Says the guy with all the mercs.” He sighed. “Justin, just this once, stop posturing and get on with it. You want me to suffer for all I took from you, right? Well do it, so we can move onto more interesting things.”

Justin leaned in. “Oh, you think this is funny? You think this is one of your elaborate plans to trick me into handing you whatever you want?”

Tristan lowered his voice to a whisper. “Justin, this isn’t a plan. I’m just going with what you set up and have faith that it’ll work out in my favor. But,” he lowered his voice more, forcing Justin to lean even close, “if I can give you a piece of advice. If there’s ever a next time, when you send someone to capture me, remind them that claws can cut through even reinforced plastic, given enough time.”

He snapped the bindings and grabbed Justin by the neck, lifting him as he stood. The fear in his brother’s eyes spoke of what he imagined Tristan would do to him, and it almost drove him to do it. Instead, he threw Justin at the mercs and ran in the opposite direction from the crash. He didn’t want to risk running into those mercs.

“Go after him!” Justin yelled. “Kill him—not you. You say here.”

Tristan smiled. Anyone who his brother felt he needed for protection was one less after him. Not that numbers mattered. It had been a long time since he’d hunted in the forest, but this was still more his environment than the humans’. He stopped behind a large trunk and waited.

“Do you see him?” the woman asked. Tristan had expected his brother to keep her close; he did like human women.

“No,” a man replied, the thin one. “And with his dark fur and all the shadows, he can hide anywhere. We should have grabbed the thermal goggles when we got here.”

“Oh?” the woman replied. “And in what universe did you know this guy was going to escape and force us to chase him through the forest?”

“Maybe if the two of you shut up, we’d be able to catch him by surprise,” a second man said.

No chance of that, Tristan thought, not with how loud their steps were. He listened to them approaching, close enough Tristan wasn’t surprised when he saw the barrel of the rifle appear next to him.

He grabbed it, pulling the merc off balance and forward. An elbow in the face sent her staggering back. Tristan flipped the rifle, pressed it against her chest, and fired. She flew back from the point-blank shot, but the armor took enough of the energy she was still alive as she crashed through the trees—groaning, but unmoving.

He spun as someone ran in his direction, drawn by the noises. He stopped before Tristan, eyes wide and raising his own rifle, but too late. The man’s head exploded from Tristan’s shot.

Tristan crouched down, listening for the third merc. That one knew what he was doing, watching where he stepped. He had experience moving in forests, but he still made sounds.

“What happened?” Justin yelled. “I heard blaster shots!” Tristan used Justin’s voice to cover his movement. “Someone answer me!”

Tristan stopped and aimed through the foliage. The merc became visible, and Tristan fired three times. The man grunted and fell to a knee, but his armor kept him alive. The next shot took off his head.

Tristan went to the woman who had regained enough of her senses to try to scramble away from him. He shot her in the head, too.

And that left Justin and his merc. He circled around to come at them from a direction they didn’t expect. He walked silently, no longer worried about Justin hearing him. His yelling showed he’d forgotten that part of their father’s training, too.

In the distance, he could make out fighting, and he smiled. Alex— possibly Jacoby too, since it had been their hover that flew over—was dealing with the mercs.

He scanned the area as he moved. Justin only had one merc left, as far as Tristan knew, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been cunning enough to hide some. The clearing was too far to help anyone, so they would be in the forest, waiting.

Tristan felt the string against his foot as he lifted it. It broke before he could do anything other than throw himself to the side. 

It kept the trunk from crashing squarely in his chest, but the branches still attached to it smashed into him, one of them impaling his side.

He bit down on his lip to keep from screaming as he was thrown back, crashing through more branches before coming to a sudden stop. The branch was still through him. He had to work out the kind of damage it had done, how to take it out without making things worse, and get ready for Justin.

If only he could get his body to obey him.

He closed his eyes and took slow breaths. Pain was simply a response from his body. It could be ignored. He moved a hand and felt along the back, following the branch where it reached the trunk. The end was ragged, ripped away, so that was good; he wasn’t pinned in place. The branch wasn’t too thick. If he could break it close to the wound, he’d be able to move.

“You must have thought I forgot about traps,” Justin said, accompanied by two mercs. So he’d been right, there had been at least one hidden.

Tristan stopped trying to work out the weak point of the branch and rested his head back against the tree. He couldn’t run, so he had to play for time.

He forced a smile. “I did think you’d forgotten about that rule, too. ‘Prepare the terrain to your advantage’.”

“Actually, I’m surprised you didn’t get caught in the snares over there.” Justin pointed to where Tristan had shot the other mercs. “That’s where you were, right? My men set up traps there, too.”

“Of course they did.” That explained where the mercs might be, if they were still setting traps. He looked at the new merc, a bulky fellow with a young-looking face. Almost too young for the mass of his body. “Let me guess. Justin didn’t tell you how to set up the traps, did he? He just said to set them up and left you to figure out the how.”

“Don’t answer him,” Justin snapped, cutting off the man’s reply. “He’s just trying to goad you into doing something stupid.”

“And you complained about me forgetting a few of father’s rules. Do you remember any of them?”

“Oh,” Justin sneered, “like you remember how to set up traps after all these years.”

Tristan smiled. “Give me time to heal, and I’ll show you the kind of traps I can set. I don’t even have to look them up on the net.” He rested his head on the tree again. “When did you get here, anyway?”

“A little more than a week ago, close to two. I figured you’d be in the city, so I came here, and sent the rest to the city to wait for you to make a move.”

Tristan chuckled. “You must have missed me by a day, no more. Me and Alex spent a night here.” He sighed. “How did you even know I was here, on Samalia?”

“You’ve gotten careless. I tracked the transactions that went through your accounts a few months ago. I have a fast ship, and there were mercs already in the area.”

Tristan shook his head. “I don’t use those accounts because I know you can… A few months ago? How many?”

Justin shrugged.

What accounts had Alex used to buy the explosives to destroy the depot? He’d never told him about the off-limit accounts; there hadn’t been a need. Tristan was the one who handled all that large-volume buying. He sighed. He should have told Alex, should have trusted him enough to tell him about Justin. There were so many things he should have told Alex.

Justin put a hand to his missing ear. “Do you hear that?”

Tristan chuckled once, and would have doubled over from the painful coughing if the branch hadn’t held him in place. It had broken from the trap, but he had to have missed where it had caught on this tree.

“All I can hear,” he panted, “is my heart.”

“The shooting stopped. I’m guessing your partner’s dead.” 

“Ah,” was all Tristan said.

“You don’t sound all that heartbroken about it. I thought you cared for him.”

Tristan smiled. “I don’t have to be sad about that. If it’s silent now, it’s because your mercs are dead.”

“One against six? He’s the one who’s dead.”

“I trained him. I’ve pitted him against entire criminal organizations. On Parwen, he went up against thirty enforcers, and he’s the one who walked away from them.” He had trouble breathing.

“How?”

“How do you think?” He forced himself to speak. He was no longer certain he was going to survive this, but he needed his brother to know he was going to be avenged. “I taught him everything I know. I showed him how to spit in the universe’s face, how to never fear death. That used to be the proudest I was of him.”

“Used to? What happened?” He paused. “Or are you telling me you think beating six mercs is a better accomplishment?”

“No, but watching him beat the crap out of you is going to be so much more satisfying.”

“You’re delusional. You’re dying and it’s affecting your mind.” 

“Possibly,” Tristan admitted. “Just tell me one thing.” 

“What?” Justin asked, annoyed.

“Is that him over there?”