To say that there was a lot to learn on Eutophoria would be a colossal understatement. For instance, of the linguistics and slang of Xenos species, mostly of the Kin and T’au, who Kane soon learned were the original founders of Eutophoria in the first place. Eutophoria was built by the Kin as a mobile mining colony, but was lost (intentionally or otherwise) to their Ancestor Cores and so became an independent mercantile installation. Upon contact with some semi-disillusioned members of the T’au’s Water Caste, an agreement of neutrality was formed, and the rest was history.
Despite that shared history, however, the most populous species on Eutophoria was humanity. It turns out that mankind both creates many members of its species, and that its central authority—the Imperium—is very good at driving a good chunk of those members away from its pious and unforgiving infrastructure, especially when faced with the realities present in the rest of the galaxy; that was, after all, how Kane had arrived in Eutophoria, and indeed, his case was not an unusual one. If nothing else, this helped Kane settle in a bit more easily, but even other humans, disparate and scattered through the cosmos as they are, are capable of having significantly different societal and cultural norms. And this was to say nothing of the humans’ varying degrees of faith in the Imperium they had once belonged to. So integrating with the human population on Eutophoria was easier for Kane, but not easy.
There were other, if rarer, Xenos present on Eutophoria too. Among those that Kane already knew of were the rare Eldar, who beheld humans such as Kane with the same respect—or lack thereof—that the Imperium would urge of them in return, and the greenskin that Kane had witnessed partaking in a fight club. These were perhaps the rarest species; Kane saw very few Eldar on Eutophoria, and only that singular greenskin. Others, identified by Cornelius, such as the Jokaero or Naiad, were more common than the Eldar, but still a rare sight. Curiously, despite the thorough investigative processes of imported goods and peoples by the T’au, there also appeared to be a not-insignificant rat population on Eutophoria; Cornelius knew not where they came from or how the infestation had arrived. More curious still, the Kin insisted on being alerted to any such sightings, yet refused to elaborate on what they knew of the rats or why they were important.
Which is all to say that there was a lot to learn. But Kane was settling in, and to him, it began to seem as though he had found a worthy and worthwhile home.
Alas, nothing lasts forever.
***
There was an ebb and flow to the rate of patronage of Cornelius’s establishment—another thing Kane learned, and quickly at that. It could not be said that there were ‘days’ or ‘nights’ on Eutophoria, on account of there being no localized star and no axial rotation of the installation. However, there were certain waking hours more popular than others, and they tended to be later in one’s daily routine.
Which is why, when a loose crowd of civilians began rushing down the main road Kane had ventured upon during his initial foray on Eutophoria, Kane knew something was amiss. Cursory inspection of their faces and voices suggested panic. “Hey, boss,” Kane, sitting at Cornelius’s counter, called to the latter. Cornelius perked up from addressing a customer’s order, and Kane nodded toward the front door.
Cornelius noted the unusual behavior that Kane had picked up on. “Go check it out. Mind yourself,” Cornelius said. Kane nodded again, rose from his seat, and strode outside into the crowd.
“Hey,” Kane said to the first passerby that ran past him, though that did little to garner any attention over whatever it was people were running from. “Hey!” he repeated to another, reaching out and grabbing someone’s arm. They tried to smack Kane’s grasp away, but Kane insisted: “What’s the deal?”
“Konrad’s pet got loose!” the civilian—human—replied, and hurried away from Kane.
“Who the hell’s Konrad?” Kane called, but no response came, save for a guttural growl some distance down the road. It sounded like a beast alright, and Kane, for a moment, dreaded to face whatever had conjured the noise. But, he reasoned, better to have some idea of what was going on then not. So, with minor hesitation, Kane gingerly spun amidst the last remnants of the crowd to face the creature, and found it familiar: the greenskin he had spied in the back-alley fightclub from his initial arrival in Eutophoria. It was reddened, now, and as it dropped half of a corpse to the ground, it was not hard to figure out why.
On instinct, Kane’s right hand slid toward the stubpistol holstered on his waist, until the greenskin turned its gaze to him, after which he froze. There were still other civilians around, too; a shootout in the open streets of Eutophoria would hardly have been ‘keeping the peace.’ But the greenskin had seen him, and seen his movements toward his weapon, and that seemed to suffice to garner its attention. “Youz!” it shouted down the road. “Wit’ da shoota!”
Kane was not ashamed to have run back inside Cornelius’s bar. “Boss! Door!” Kane called to Cornelius, requesting the keycard that would seal the front doors shut. Cornelius did not question his bouncer, and, with haste, reached into his front pocket and tossed the keycard across the bar. Kane snagged it out of the air, spun on his feet to swipe the keycard past the encoded scanner, and took a step back from the entrance of Cornelius’s establishment. That was all that could be managed before a green fist broke Kane’s nose, stopping from cleaving his head clean off by the bar’s doors closing upon the greenskin’s upper arm.
“Why’z youz runnin’? Runnin’ ain’t fightin’,” the greenskin taunted as Kane squirmed deeper inside the bar. It then wrenched the doors open, breaking them on their hinges, and stepped inside. It then made a low growling noise as it surveyed the room, Cornelius’s patrons backing away from the creature. “Ehhh…none of youz lookz good for crumpin’—‘cept fer you, shoota,” it suggested, pointing toward Kane, who was by then clutching at his bloodied face.
“Not me, then?” Cornelius asked, and in a flash slid a shotgun up from behind the counter and took aim at the greenskin. The beast ducked before Cornelius fired a shot, and the next thing Kane knew, his waist was being hoisted into the air by his belt strap. Cornelius, much to Kane’s gratitude, did not riddle the latter’s backside with buckshot, though Kane’s backside did subsequently slam against Cornelius’s front counter as the greenskin tossed him forward. Cornelius ducked to the side to try to get an angle on the beast past his bouncer’s flailing body, only to narrowly dodge a knife thrown by the greenskin. It clinked off—and scratched—the bionics attached to Cornelius’s right eye and embedded itself in the wall behind the counter, and though the attack was not lethal, there was enough weight behind it to knock Cornelius off-balance during his movement. Cornelius fell behind the cover of the counter, getting a glimpse at the knife as it embedded in the wall; it was the one he had given to Kane, which meant the greenskin had taken it from Kane’s waist and thrown it at Cornelius faster than either of them were able to witness.
The first shot went off, then, from Kane’s stubpistol. It clipped the greenskin on its left cheek, making a scratch but not drawing fungal blood. “Now dat’s more like it!” the greenskin shouted, enjoying some action. “You humies are—” it started, but Kane was not there to chat, and unloaded a few more times, this time landing his shots square in the greenskin’s chest. All penetrated the greenskin’s hide, but not punctured the bone beneath.
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“Gun!” Kane shouted to his boss as the greenskin lurched toward him, arms forward. Kane reached behind the counter to grasp the butt of the shotgun without turning to face it, and in one clean motion, whipped its barrel forward and pulled the trigger, moments before the greenskin clubbed him to death—or worse. Again, the blast ripped apart the greenskin’s chest yet did not punch through its bones, but this time there was enough kick involved to at least knock the Ork onto its backside away from Kane. It started to get up, until Kane shot it in its chest again, further pinning it against the ground, after which Kane pressed toward his enemy for once.
“Knew you wuz a—” the greenskin laughed as it struggled to remove itself from the ground, but never finished its sentence before Kane wedged the barrel of the shotgun between its front fangs and pulled the trigger a third time. The buckshot went up the base of the greenskin’s skull and ricocheted around its braincage before finally managing to rupture out, decapitating the beast in a particularly gory execution. At that, finally, the greenskin went limp.
After a brief pause of awe, Kane found the patrons of Cornelius’s establishment cheering and thanking him for (likely) having saved their lives. To Kane, however, he interpreted the cheers as though he were the victor of a bout in a fight club, which was perhaps what the greenskin had wanted for itself. “Kid,” Cornelius called to him, and he turned to face his boss. Cornelius waved him back to the counter, and in the meantime addressed his customers. “Y’all best scram before the Peacekeepers arrive,” he told them. They agreed and filed out, thanking Kane again as they left. When they were gone, Cornelius turned to Kane again, taking the shotgun from his hands. “Seems you can bounce after all.”
“My backside wasn’t happy to learn that,” Kane groaned. “That sorta thing happen often around here?”
“Never. Let me see that nose,” Cornelius said, and drew a towel from under the counter. “This’ll sting.”
“It already stings,” Kane shrugged. At least, Kane thought it already stung. After Cornelius wedged it back into place, he found it stung quite a bit more. Cornelius handed him a bottle of amasec to wash the pain down.
“Well, we had a good run of it, didn’t we?” Cornelius suggested. “Three months, eh?”
“What, am I fired?” Kane asked, appalled.
“No!” Cornelius shouted at once. “No, no, kid, I’m not firing you. But I…I won’t be able to run this place for a bit, if ever again.”
“Why’s that?” Kane asked. Cornelius nodded toward the dead greenskin lying in the middle of the room. “And here I thought my heroism would be good for business, not bad for it,” Kane shrugged.
“Oh, it would be, under ordinary circumstances. But uh, alas, you made a mess. I’m not blaming you for that, of course—what, a mess or our lives? Yeah, I’ll take the mess,” Cornelius laughed. “You know much about Orks?”
“Guard wanted me to shoot at them, not know about them,” Kane shook his head.
“Well, they’re pestilent buggers. Their blood will need to be cleaned up, and I don’t mean with a mop and some water. Otherwise, it will grow into more of `em. The Imperial approach is fire—lots of it. Our kind would burn this whole building to the ground just to be sure,” Cornelius laughed. “Thankfully the Kin and T’au have some more discreet cleaning crews, but they’ll need to be thorough, and while they work…well, we won’t be able to be here. Keep the piece,” he said, pointing to Kane’s stubpistol. “Ha, get it? Keep the peace? Ah, whatever. If you find possible employ with other humans, I’ll put in a good word for you—my word’s not likely to mean much outside our kind, though. And keep the bottle, too,” Cornelius suggested.
“I…shit. What a day. Was a smooth week until now, huh?” Kane noted.
Cornelius nodded. “When it rains…”
“It pours,” Kane agreed. “Will I see you again after today?”
“If I can keep this place, I will, and you’re more than welcome to picking things up with me where we left off,” Cornelius said. “You best leave, too, before the Peacekeepers show, unless you want to be answering questions with a short, stout, and dry-witted Xenos for the next twelve hours.”
Kane nodded, paused, and then reached over the counter. Cornelius took his hand and shook it. “Thanks, Cornelius. For everything. We did have a good run of it.”
“Yes we did, kid, yes we did. Watch yourself out there. It’s a big universe; try not to be swallowed up in it,” Cornelius warned.
“Same to you,” Kane nodded, and rose from the counter, body still sore from being clobbered around by the greenskin on the ground.
“Mind your step, kid,” Cornelius added, which Kane acknowledged, giving a wide berth to the greenskin’s gore as he headed toward the busted-doors of the establishment. Kane paused at the doors, looked back to Cornelius, and waved goodbye. No response came; Cornelius was already picking up the pieces of some glasses that had shattered in the panicked ruckus, and did not see Kane as he left. Somehow, that felt right to Kane; Cornelius had kept himself busy as often as he could. Perhaps that was his means of surviving on Eutophoria or the universe in general. Kane thought to learn from that example as he went outside.
He did not like what he saw standing across the street opposite him. He looked to his left, and saw no one on the once-panicked street. He looked to his right, where the greenskin had come from, and saw naught but the corpse it had left behind. Kane looked back ahead, and confronted the figure that awaited him. “You watching me or something?” Kane shouted, stepping up to the tall, crimson-cloaked woman. Her face was still obscured behind the cloak, though the glimmer of gold continued to tease out from under its veil.
“Perhaps. You are amusing, Ishmael Kane,” she answered.
“How do you know my name?” he asked.
“I see it written on you in blood, as I see it for all things,” she replied. “That will not make sense to you.”
“It doesn’t, you’re right.”
“I often am.”
“If I’m so entertaining to watch, why didn’t you help with the greenskin?” Kane asked her.
“Perhaps that was the entertainment, Ishmael. And besides, you did not seem to need it. May I?” she asked him.
“May you what?” he winced.
“Your face.”
“What of it?” he frowned again.
“It is painful, no?”
“The price of your entertainment,” Kane grumbled.
The woman shook her head. “I take no joy from seeing others in pain. So, I ask, may I assist with it?”
“How?” Kane asked. She did not reply with words, and instead lifted a hand up out from her cloak. It was stygian black, like a suit of power armor, but appeared as though fleshy all the same. She reached up to Kane’s head, and though he recoiled, he found himself too curious to step away. Gold light glimmered from the tips of her fingers and spread across his visage, and when his face warmed, he then found it within himself to back away from the woman. “What in the hell did you—?” he started, tossing his own hands up to his face. But, despite the warmth still present, he found the pain had gone, and his nose had healed entirely. In fact, the splotches of blood on his face had been cleaned away too, as though he had never bled in the first place, and even his backside had been cured of its soreness. “Witchcraft,” he muttered.
“You are not the first to fear as such. You would not be the first to lash out from those fears, either,” she acknowledged. “To fear what you do not understand is natural, but to kill what you do not understand is entirely an Imperial construct. You are no longer of the Imperium, Ishmael Kane.”
“I thought you said the Emperor was with me yet, when we first met,” Kane suggested.
“I did, and He is still, yes,” she nodded. “The Imperium is not its God, and vice versa. Ask.”
“Ask? Ask what?”
“The question you mean to ask.”
Kane paused. Then he opened his mouth to speak, but paused again. He then stepped forward, nearing her as he had before, and asked, “What is it you want with me? I’m clearly more than your entertainment.”
“I want someone willing to fight for something better than fear.”
“What’s better than fear?”
At that, the woman loosed a chuckle, and Kane had to admit to himself that her laugh was quite soothing. “Hope,” she answered. “You served such a role in defending the hapless from that greenskin who, in a plane without you, would have slaughtered your tavern and more. Are you willing to fight for hope again? If so, follow me, Ishmael Kane.”
Kane paused for a third time as the figure walked away to his left, down the still-empty road of Eutophoria, toward the black hole that loomed in the horizon. “I’m not working for someone whose name I don’t know,” Kane called to her, turning toward her backside. He spied some initials carved into the hilt of the Eviscerator she carried on her back, but could not make out what they were.
The woman stopped in her step, chuckled again, and then turned halfway toward him. “The name’s Luciene. You will have other questions. I will answer them, in time, should you choose to join the cause of hope.”
Kane thought about it, but his feet chose to move before he made up his mind.