It wasn’t long after I’d figured out the clutter of my interface that I found my target. He was human enough, with a broken nose, cauliflower ears, and elbows that kept violently jabbing into anyone who got too close to him.
For someone passing through one of the rim worlds’ most densely populated cities, the man seemed to expect everyone to give him alone a free way of passage.
I’d been standing on the first level of one of those winding catwalks at the time, trying to figure out the local price for pistol ammo — I still carried that same gun from the sinking charger, along with my knife — as I poked around for rumors about strange items or artifacts making their way onto the market.
It was through that massive gate hovering above our heads that Mikayes and Jenna found that initial Artifact, and if anyone else had brought back something similar, they were bound to know about it here.
Though, as things would have it, ‘alien artifact’ and ‘strange contraption’ didn’t mean a whole lot on a world where tens of thousands of cultures had boiled together in a hodgepodge of curiosities.
By all means, between a dozen headache inducing attempts at explaining what I meant, and even more frustrating debates over why a single bullet couldn’t reasonably cost ten credits, it hadn’t taken much for me to begin tailing that man which my UI had just identified as:
Kider Mill
Ex-Soldier, Pit Fighter
Threat Level: 33
Short Temper, Intoxicated, In A Hurry
My initial plan had been to find someone that wouldn’t maul me to death if we got into a scuffle. Say, an unarmed street punk with a bit too much confidence, or maybe a bored fighter of some seedy gym that would allow things to get just a little bit bloody.
I needed to know where my body was at, and how viable my Cryak mod was for combat, before I set out into the field where I might get myself killed.
Kider Mill definitely didn’t fit the bill. It seemed like he wanted to kill anyone who got in his way. But then my UI had sorted out another piece of information for me:
Allegiance: The Opposition ??
Upon his neck, a tattoo had just been highlighted and enhanced before my eyes. Death to the Astral Fleet, it read.
𐫰 𐫰 𐫰
Even without the trail of upset pedestrians he left in his wake, Kider Mill wouldn’t have been hard to track down once my UI locked in. A live feed of shortcuts and areas to avoid were constantly being updated before my eyes — a loose plank I’d best avoid, a slippery spot where someone had dropped a jar of oily substances, or simple advice to stay clear of a barking ball of fat and wrinkles whose chain-link leash had just snapped.
Screams rose behind us as the chonky creature bit into someone’s leg, but neither me nor Kider turned around to look. Which was fortunate, as I was practically walking at his heels by now, slipping through the crowd with far less effort than he did.
There were a lot of curses and yells whenever the man’s elbows collided with someone new, but no one stopped for long enough for it to turn into a fight.
Even if Kider Mill was mostly human, there was no part of my mind that doubted he was also under the influence of a lot of genetic steroids and stimulants. His neck was thicker than his thighs, and it seemed like a vein in his face would pop whenever he turned around to glare at anyone yelling his way.
A terrible candidate for someone looking for a let’s-not-get-permanently-injured fight, but the more data my UI collected about the man, the more certain I got.
It wouldn’t be another seven years until the rebellions broke out on a galactic scale, but they must’ve been brewing before that. Out here among the rim worlds, where adherence to rules and laws were more of a suggestion than anything enforced, seemed as likely as place as any.
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Especially now, with the heavy presence of the Stratos Apolytos due to the gate being opened. There was bound to be friction. The question was just, friction that would turn into a spark and burn the entire galaxy?
It was far-fetched, sure, but it was the only clue I had to go on. The only interesting piece of data my UI had picked up after an hour of walking these streets.
And so, as Kider Mill turned down a dim tunnel, away from the main street, I only hesitated a little before following after him.
𐫰 𐫰 𐫰
“A new face?” The prune-like doorman peered up at me through thick lenses. He barely had any neck, his ears were floppy, and his body composition was more spherical than anything. “Or just someone who got lost walking down the wrong street?”
I could hear the pounding music from deeper inside the building, like a steady heartbeat underneath my feet.
Daylight was no longer a presence, leaving these tunnels illuminated by nothing but neon lights and seedy signs. The acrid scent of smoke was ever present — sometimes pungent, other times sickly sweet — mixing with body odor and heavy liqueur.
At least this stretch of tunnels and narrow passage ways, less crowded than many of the others, didn’t have any of the lifeless silhouettes, reeking of vomit and feces, that lay tucked away in the gutters.
“Mister Kider Mill told me to come here,” I said without hesitation. I’d seen the burly man enter this place some ten minutes ago, and I’d patiently bided my time in a nearby alley since. Just to make my own arrival seem less suspicious.
At worst, I expected to get turned away at the door, and at best…well I might learn something.
My plan had still been forming as I approached the doorman, but if things started to go south, I at least had a freshly loaded gun tucked into the back of my pants.
Most likely, Kider had nothing to do with no one. But just in case, it couldn’t hurt to check out.
There was still some time before I had to meet up with Jenna and Mikayes.
Acting 8 > 9
Deception 6 > 7
The doorman shook his head with a pitiful expression, before stepping aside. “If you’re dumb enough to come here on that man’s invitation, then nothing I say will stop you.”
He gestured for me to head inside, and I obliged with a short nod.
𐫰 𐫰 𐫰
The pounding music only grew louder with each step I took down those dusky stairs, along with a voice in my head telling me that this was a bad idea. It had been there ever since I first started following Kider, and it was probably right. But I hadn’t gotten this second chance at life to do nothing.
Only misery and regret awaited me at the end of that road. I knew that from experience, and five months in transit, able to do nothing but train, had made me impatient. There'd been years of my past life where I'd lived in places like this one anyway. There wasn't a whole lot to fear.
As such, even as a dozen blood-shot eyes, glazed over by whatever fumes they were huffing, turned my way at the end of those stairs, I just greeted them with nods, too.
Their attention didn’t remain with me for long.
The loud snap of bones breaking had just cut through the music, followed by lazy cheers and laughter.
The hall I’d just entered wasn’t too different from most seedy clubs you’d find through the galaxy. The music was loud, its patrons looked miserable, and there was booze and drugs aplenty. The one exception perhaps being that, rather than some dance floor or strip pole, what rose at the center of the room was a cage.
Within it, Kider Mill had just pushed an alien woman off from his knee, her spine snapped in half. She didn’t even twitch as a bunch of functionaries pulled her out of the cage. Kider didn’t seem to care where he kept huffing violently, pacing back and forth until he was handed a syringe of some shimmering liquid by a nervous functionary.
He snatched it from her hand.
Boot-leg stim, if I had to guess, judging from how his frame visibly calmed as he punched the needle into his underarm, injecting the substance straight into his muscles.
The claw marks that ran along his biceps and naked back began to mend themselves, stopping the bleeding as his eyes took on the same glazed appearance as the rest of the room’s patrons. No, not patrons, fighters, I realized as I looked around.
Those scattered cheers and laughter I’d heard earlier had come from above, on a second floor balcony where shadowy figures mingled.
One of them, wearing a wide brimmed hat, was even saying something to Kider who was only half listening below, but the music was pounding too loudly for me to hear what, exactly. More so, with the way the lights were set up, there wasn’t even a face for me to see through the shadows.
All I could make out was the glow of whatever cigar the shadowy figure was smoking, along with the glimmer of a sliver ring they rolled between their fingers.
My heart began to beat faster.
Even without a conscious command, my UI had just captured a perfect snapshot of that ring, enhancing it until I could see the sigil imprinted within -- five fingers closing over three stars, just the way I remembered it.
Nearly three hundred years ago for me now, it was that same Hand of Freedom that’d claimed the life of Empress Vorath, humanity’s last Grand Archon, effectively plunging the galaxy into centuries of chaos.
The rebel movement. It was here.
𐫰 𐫰 𐫰
“What stimulants would you like to use, sir?” one of the functionaries asked me, pulling me from my daze.
They’d just pulled another lifeless body from the cage. Kider was still in there, huffing and frothing at the mouth yet looking nowhere near done with his bloody streak. He’d broken another back and two jaws during the short minutes I’d been circling the room, trying to catch a better look of the brimmed hat figure above.
Perhaps they’d noticed what I was doing, or maybe this had merely been my fate ever since I entered this room, but now, four functionaries were standing before me. They clearly didn’t intend to let me just walk away.
“None?” I tried, and the girl who’d raised the question gave me a short nod.
“Good. Then Mister Kider is now ready to meet you.”
As my eyes flickered towards the cage, it was only to be met with a murderous gaze, more fitting of a beast than a man. They’d never stopped injecting him with those boot-leg stimulants, and now, Kider Mill seemed ready to tear me apart, limb for limb, no matter who I was.
Ah, fuck…