Diaz

He'd survived worse, but that margin was narrowing faster than he liked. Hit and run style raids were old habit for him; they were second nature to the point of being mundane. Of course, that was back when there were clearly defined lines of battle, resupply points and on-call artillery support if things got dicey enough. Hell was an apt comparison, but at least he'd had his own corner to catch his breath in. Or a place to change his socks.

He lifted his foot to take another step, feeling the gore-drenched interior of his boot squelch as he did. The only part of every unpleasant step he took that he could draw a small measure of satisfaction from was the fact that most of that blood wasn't his. His foot settled, and the cold blood welled up between his toes. He raised his other foot and kept marching.

Diaz had been skirmishing for the past hour, longer than any soldier had a right to be constantly running from fight to fight. There wasn't a single part of him that didn't hurt— aside from the parts he couldn't feel anymore. He could live with the pain. No matter what, he would endure a while longer.

He wasn't delusional about his situation either. As he scampered from building to building, and across streets he'd painted red, he wasn't looking for a fight anymore. He clamped his rag-wrapped offhand harder across the holes in his gut that reeked of shit. He was looking for a good place to die.

Diaz had always thought it would be a bunker; maybe one captured from the enemy, maybe one to be held at all costs. It was that or a hill. Dying on a hill sounded nice. His grim smile was already plastered across his face; he couldn't summon the will to banish it anymore. With his blood running down the hollow scars of his patchwork face, he knew he'd probably look quite mad.

It took a particular type of madness to lay down your life for others. To follow orders and keep pressing forward even when death was the only thing ahead of you. The insanity to rush at a gunman with nothing but clenched fists and balls of tungsten. Whatever that madness was called, Diaz was as full of it as he was low on blood.

Another bullet tugged at his hip from behind. Diaz let it spin him around and fell to the ground. He braced his pistol on his knee and centered its sights on the hooded figure unscrewing the barrel of his pipe pistol. The two were maybe thirty meters away from each other. Diaz squeezed the trigger and he didn't miss. Another wall on the station was painted with runny red.

He struggled to rise, using his arms more than his legs to get vertical. He spared a single glance to ensure his most recent assailant wasn't moving, then another for his artwork. All the splotches of crimson could have been some alley rat's tag. If he squinted the right way, it vaguely resembled a flower in bloom. Diaz shook his head and resumed his weary march. He needed to find his hill.

An empty church, another looted store, a squatter shanty. None of them looked right. None of them felt like his hill. He needed something defensible, at least in the short term. He was down to his pistol and his seax, so a closed-in area would be better. He had a notion of making his stand in the middle of a street's crossroads, but that was stupid. These thugs could barely hit a man at anything over 50ft but they could get lucky. A broken chuckle wept from his bloodied lips, sending jets of pain through his entire body.

"Better t'be lucky 'n good anyday." He dryly joked with less strength than he'd hoped for. Speaking—or even breathing too deeply—tugged at the missing meat across his torso.

A smoke stand, a fast food joint, a machine shop. That last one might not be bad. Diaz poked his head in the broken door and just as quickly ducked back out when he saw all the bodies within arm's reach. A warning shot flew out the doorway right behind his head. It wasn't surprising a metalworker would be defending his livelihood with the products of his craft. A machinist with nothing to lose was a scary thing. He limped onward.

A shirtless thug with a purple dragon tattooed on his chest sprung from an alley to Diaz's left. The thug charged him with a thick segment of shiny pipe brandished overhead. Diaz jumped back, pushing off with his lead foot. Or he would have, if his leg hadn't buckled under the sudden strain. Diaz pitched forward and flinched his left arm high to intercept the blow. The chrome pipe smashed into his terran bone. The outcome was unsurprising.

Diaz's broken arm sloughed limply to his side, the thugs follow-through blow crunching home on Diaz's collarbone instead of his skull. Shirtless reared back for another swing while Diaz squeezed off three rounds in his chest. Shirtless hit the ground and Diaz wasted a fourth bullet to ensure he never got another stupid idea again. Then the pain finally pierced Diaz's drug-tempered mind. He grits his teeth hard enough to make them creak, but he doesn't utter a sound.

Only one of the bones in his forearm were broken, and it was a clean break too. He none to gently forced the snapped bone back into alignment and scanned his surroundings. He holstered his pistol and took Shirtless's shiny pipe with him to the freshly vacated alley. He was probably wasting his time with a splint, but he couldn't let the injury slow him down any more than it had to. He had a hill to find.

Diaz assessed his materials; a surplus of sturdy red canvas, a ridiculously heavy chromed pipe and his own battered body. A pistol with single-digit ammunition plus his knife and teeth didn't leave him much to work with either. He cut some long strips of canvas from his rag but didn't know what to do with them. Using the pipe would not only be too long but also too heavy. He needed something light, sturdy, short and straight, meaning nothing in the alley would work— even if he ignored the filth.

Diaz eyed the straight knife in his good hand. Under normal circumstances, cutting off his own arm was a rather moronic way to deal with a broken bone. Even if he was that desperate, he'd still need something to cinch the tourniquet tight. His eyes went from his knife to the heavy, worthless chrome pipe. Then back to his blade, then back to the tube. He briefly recalled Jhordan's words regarding stupid ideas.

Diaz lined up his knife over his broken bones, thinking about where he'd be tying off his mangled arm. He mustered his strength and his resolve. His knife went high overhead to put as much force behind the chop as he could manage, then he brought it down.

The dense, alloyed chrome took the slash in stride, the reverberation of the pipe matching the jarring impact in his arm. Diaz inspected the edge of his seax, noting that it had folded where the two metal sticks had met. He altered his grip, repeatedly chopping into the pipe until he had sufficiently blunted his blade along his planned tie-off points. He lined up his knife once more, clenched the cloth with his teeth and tied it off.

He heaved a relieved sigh as the weight of his hand transferred off his broken bone to his improvised splint. The knife's hilt was digging into his arm near the elbow and the blade's tip extended maybe six inches past his knuckles. It hurt like a bastard, he couldn't feel his fingers and he could barely flex them, but it would have to do. He could hear another wave of locals hot on his trail, determined to do what the hundreds of others had failed. Diaz got up, then he soldiered on.

He limped out of the alley and finally found his hill.

Floor-to-ceiling blast doors dominated the street corner like the walls of an old-timey castle. A fallen castle, it would seem. Chains, hydraulic pumps and a mess of manpower had managed to pry a segment open, exposing the bloodied marble floors within. With an entire street gang closing on his heels, Diaz threw as much caution to the vents as he could spare, entering the spacious building with his pistol and sword-fist raised.

The open lobby's ground floor seemed disconnectedly posh compared to the station streets Diaz had spent the past hour stacking bodies on. Where the yellowed marble was visible, it was polished to a shine. The floor's dazzle was accentuated by the shattered jeweled quartz from a fallen crystal chandelier. To his left, teller stations; to his right, benches bolted to the ground. The far wall dead ahead, twinned arching staircases flanked the vault door, which had been blown ajar.

The station could be cracked open to the void within a day, so these idiots robbed a bank. At least they'd die rich, the ones that weren't dead already that was. Some of the would-be robbers were spread across the lobby, mainly on the ground floor near their entrance, the room's carnage telling a story he'd heard a thousand times before. Dead looters with bullet holes and dead guards with stab wounds and cracked skulls. Diaz put the death from his mind and assessed his hill.

A massive central counter made of natural wood wrapped around a hefty stonework pillar carved in the likeness of an oak tree. The entire circular desk reminded him more of a sandbag redoubt. He could practically see the smiling clerks working side by side with grizzled defenders. As it was, the workers had long since fled, leaving a single dead security guard flopped behind the desk instead. The tree's false bark was lined with silver filigree and chipped by battle damage in a handful of places, revealing the metal underneath. The lobby's ceiling carried on the illusion of an overhead canopy, four hanging branches holding three crystal chandeliers at all cardinal points, excluding the entrance. At least the gaudy eyesore helped to fill the otherwise spaciously barren room.

The teller booths would be connected from a backroom. The stairs connected to an upper balcony and what looked like offices beyond, but the wooden railings would be more of a hindrance than a help if it came to another shootout— not that he had the ammo for one. A quick scan of the dead guards suggested the robbers had already taken their sidearms and ammo. He could probably shut himself in the vault, not that he would. He wouldn't hide from the end, whether it came in the next ten minutes or the next day. He made his way for the second floor, hoping for a lucky break but realistically pessimistic about his odds.

Diaz dropped to cover when he heard the gangsters enter behind him. The cover in question being a fallen guard slumped over the balcony railing as his brain spilled to the floor below. He peeked around his once-living bullet sponge. There were at least ten thugs with more pouring in. They were splitting up, a pod pushing left and right each around the room's centerpiece while another cluster of goons were hanging back by the entry. His vision was starting to fade, but he saw a mix of firearms and melee weapons in each pod.

He tried to steady his breath and his aim. His assailants inched their way closer on both flanks, cutting off his exit— not that he held any illusions about making it out of this bank alive. His thoughts drifted to the woman he'd chased all those years ago, the comrades he'd lost and the friends he'd made since. How many of them have we outlived?

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When his mind started drifting to a darker place, he conjured up an image of Nye, alive and well. Giving one Lee a good life wouldn't atone for the thousands he'd slaughtered, but she deserved to live a good life. If she could be happy, that would just have to be enough for him. We die so others may live.

Diaz squared his pistol on the gaudy chandelier ten meters away and fired.

He didn't wait to watch it crash onto the rightmost pod, he'd already shifted his aim to the furthest group from him. Seven bullets ripped through the weakened flesh of voidborn spacers, but only two crumpled to join the dead at their feet.

Return fire misted Diaz with the contents of his bullet sponge and peppered his arms with wooden splinters and bone fragments. His body was already moving along the balcony, building momentum and closing the distance with the unmolested cluster of thugs. Bolts racked, breeches broke, and cylinders spun as the gunmen readied another volley. He launched himself over the railing to meet them.

In full gravity, Diaz would have never made the five-meter jump with his injuries. With the station's light spin, he overshot the group, colliding bodily with the leftmost chandelier they'd scattered from. His empty pistol flew from his grasp, the muscles of his chest getting cut to bloody ribbons while the crystalline light fixture swung wildly.

The firing squad set their volley up to meet him. Jagged shards of flying quartz went whizzing through the lobby, ricocheting off stone or embedding in meat. The crystalline shrapnel shredded Diaz's good arm, his shoulders, even his face.

A single moment seemed to drag on impossibly long. A cracked triangular shard flew straight towards his face while the others curved under the whims of physics. The light caught the dazzling jewel as it sliced through the air in a flat arc. He couldn't even blink before it skewered into his right eye. Then he saw nothing from that side while something runny dribbled down his cheek.

The jagged weight impaling Diaz suddenly lessened. He got a knee up to push himself away from the chandelier as they both fell. All forty-six subjective kilos of him slammed into the room's central desk and crumpled behind it, driving the wind from him. A quarter second later, the much heavier light fixture all but exploded, angelic tings of crystal on crystal mixing with the panicked screams of the maimed and dying. It was distant music in his ringing ears.

It took three attempts before Diaz got any breath in his lungs. His swimming vision saw a dozen impacts where the counter bulged inwards. The dim lobby could have been lit by firelight now that he'd destroyed all but one dazzling candelabra, yet he swore he could see the stars twinkling in his left eye. His right eye saw nothing at all. Diaz felt of comfortable chill creeping into his limbs as he lay there.

Hadn't he fought long enough? Could he finally rest now? Surely he'd bought Princess enough time. He remembered the warmth of her hands on his face. When was the last time someone had held him like that? They both knew how this ended. He'd done what soldiers did. He'd kept his promise. He could die with a smile on his face. He closed his eye as the shouting around him blurred into muffled white noise.

Why should anyone this weak deserve to be happy?

The fingers of his broken arm curled into a fist, a wave of fresh agony racing up his arm in reply. Pain was weakness leaving the body, and Diaz felt scores of it.

How can you protect them when you're dead?

He drew in a breath and gritted his teeth. If he died here, his corpse wouldn't even make a useful sandbag.

You don't even know if they made it.

Diaz rolled off the redoubt's fallen guard who'd cushioned his fall.

You need to finish the mission.

He got his feet under him and he rose from the dead, one last time.

One last promise to keep.

Diaz crawled over the desk, collapsing to the other side, jagged crystals crunching into his knees and knuckles. The chaos strewn around him had a certain beauty in his eye. The death, the blood, the lustre of things once thought precious blasted to rubble and ruin. It was a good hill to kill and die on. The thought summoned lilting broken laughter from his split bloodied lips.

The wounded thugs closed in on him, circling like corvus above rotting carrion, yet unwilling to make the first move. They could have rushed him, but the fools didn't want to die. It was almost funny. So he laughed. He laughed like a man with one foot in the grave and a noose around his neck for good measure.

Diaz moved first, launching himself with reckless abandon at the enemy. Bloodied as he was, his years of experience made all the difference. He drunkenly ducked and suddenly sidestepped wide swings, getting inside the reach of blunt weapons to deliver a flurry of shanks from his sword-fist. He employed a mix of open-hand and closed-fist strikes and blocks with his good hand. Even his feet saw a share of the murderous work hooking knees, stomping toes and kicking groins.

It was sloppy work. His lungs couldn't sync up with his blows. Diaz couldn't twist his weight into the strikes as he should have. His vision was more black than color at times. He wheezed in air and roared out defiance all the same.

A heavy blow from his blinded right brought Diaz to the ground. His blade started finding ankles and hamstrings before it could again start extracting its toll from throats and hearts and eyes. When he finally got upright once more, there was no one left to kill within reach. Before Diaz could take in his surroundings, his leg folded under him before the gunshot reached his ears.

"I'm never bored killing you fucking rocks."

Diaz writhed to find the speaker. The man's sun-faded red-clay fatigues were so horribly visible that Diaz immediately spotted him by the entry. His build betrayed his voidborn ancestry; he was so tall and slim he bordered on skeletal. A smoking hand cannon rested on his shoulder and a lit cigar poked from the gap of a missing tooth. Ugly yellow bars decorated the man's sleeve while a gold-capped beret adorned his shorn head.

"You all think you're so fucking tough. Right up until someone puts a bullet in you."

Another lance of pain rocked Diaz's crown, his neck craning under the force of the grazing shot.

"…General?" Diaz croaked.

"Commodore, rock." The man swaggered closer and sized Diaz up with a sneer. "Hard to believe you're the one who wiped out all those men. I still would have come after you, even if you didn't fuck with my men, rock."

"…Bounty?"

"Nah, that's just the ox in my air." The man squatted in front of Diaz. "You fucked with NoWa, our fucking station you stupid, fucking, rock. The fucked you think you'd accomplish?"

"…Nothing… much."

The man leveled his oversized pistol at Diaz.

"You think you're cute?" A chuckle wept from Diaz's lips. "You think this rust is funny? The price on your head is dead, rock. So I'm gonna take my time making sure you understand the gravity of your transgressions. How's that sound, rock?"

Diaz croaked out a gasp.

"Go on rock, beg. Beg me to put a bullet in your dense fucking skull." The man leaned close enough for Diaz to smell the liquid courage on his breath.

"…Talk…"

"What's there to talk about, rock?" The man leaned even closer to savor Diaz's weak words.

Diaz threw his sword-fist in a shallow hook, sinking the blade into the man's liver. He crumpled, pain and system shock overriding his brain until all he could do was drop to the floor.

"…too much." Diaz finished his sentence, and he finished the man off with a thrust to the throat. His body was leaden, but he didn't collapse just yet.

"…Fecking skinnies." Diaz commanded his eye to focus on the man's face as he bled out. Panic was the only thing he saw there. An infantry grunt would have been fighting back, lashing out even in death. Diaz rolled his eye from the man's sleeve to his headdress and its gold-star insignia.

"…Fecking officers." Diaz cut the sleeves and the meat below, tearing the bars off. He lifted the gold-star insignia from the stupid hat and pocketed it. He took the well-made hand cannon from the man's twitching fingers and rose. The rotten shit stink of his perforated guts greeted him.

"…Fecking shite." The bank's fleeting grace had fled from the massacre it now held. Anywhere but a station, the building would have been torched and rebuilt. It'd probably be open for business within a week, assuming they didn't all die today.

"…Thirsty." Diaz muttered as he left the bank behind. He followed the blood trail he'd left on his way in, noting that he wasn't refreshing the crimson markers anymore. In place of his life water, he shed a steady trickle of dazzling crystal from his tattered hide. On a planet, the shiny rocks would have been priceless. Up here, it was as common as dirt was back home.

Home…

He could never escape what it had done to him. What he had done in war. No matter how many light years he put between himself and it, he'd never forget the miles between those cities.

Diaz crumpled to the ground, his legs failing underneath of him. He kept crawling towards the water fountain, not even twenty meters away. Why was everything always so far and so close at the same time? A weak chuckle bled from his soul. He couldn't feel the pain when he laughed anymore.

The fountain. He'd made it here already? He just needed to get upright one last time. Then he could get a drink. Just a few more seconds and he wouldn't be thirsty. He bit the knot around his sword-fist and tightened.

One hand over the other. One inch at a time. Even the pain of his broken arm seemed far away now. The polished chrome basin had a sad man looking back at him, but he was beyond caring. He cupped his blood-soaked hands and filled them with silty red water.

Diaz spread his fingers and let the tainted water slip away. He tried again, and again, and again, but the red kept floating to the surface. Was there always this much blood on his hands? He gave up. His arms were too heavy.

He slumped his head in the basin, letting the water flow over his not-much-cleaner face and through the open cuts in his cheeks. Finally. Water.

Dying was thirsty work, after all.

Diaz saw something blue and yellow in the basin. He spun to face the new colors, slumping his limp body against the wall, looted hand cannon weakly raised to the hip. His finger tightened around the trigger on reflex, but he stopped himself as his only eye tried to make sense of what it saw. Tawny skin, slight build on a small girl with long black hair that shone like silk.

"…Nye."

The cute girl stepped closer, tears pouring from her wide almond eyes the color of warm soil. Her hands flashed under her shirt, but Diaz did something unthinkable.

He hesitated.

The cute girl rushed forward with a wordless roar of soul-deep pain. A sharpened length of metal sank through his bullet-riddled intestines and bowels, then lodged into the soft tissue of his spine.

Diaz finally snatched the trigger, an oversized round pulverizing the cute girl's broken heart. She collided with Diaz as her trembling body tumbled, driving the impaling blade deeper into him until something severed.

Their bodies went to the ground as one, the impaling blade scraping off the metal wall behind him. Diaz let the gun slip from his fingers and he hit the ground first, clutching the girl in arms he couldn't feel.

"I'm so sorry." He whispered.

"I'm scared." The girl was already going into shock. "Why?"

She lingered at death's door, breath coming in short, ragged gasps. It was selfish, but he couldn't help thinking about how warm she was as her blood poured onto him. Diaz held her, stroked her hair and whispered all the sweet nothings he'd never knew he knew until now, as she grew stiff in his arms. Once she was still, she grew cold, and for the first time in nearly a half decade, tears of sorrow fell from his lone eye.

His vision left him, his heart beating weaker every time. He could feel nothing but the echoes of her warmth in his memory, yet his body was unbelievably cold. How he felt so warm and cold at the same time was beyond him. Diaz drew in one deep breath that could very well be his last.

"No one should have to die alone." He whispered.

Then his head sank to his chest, and he too grew still.