Imperial jump ships were not known for the luxuries that they provided, given the sterile gray halls and constant drone of life support systems, but the thing that Haylock looked forward to the most was a hot shower. After he woke up in the medbay with a splitting headache, the others racked out and slept their exhaustion away in the squadbay, but Haylock snuck off for some alone time in the showers. When he cast his dirty uniform on the floor, he crinkled his nose as it almost stood upright by itself since it was caked in so much dry blood and mud. His body was not much better off then the uniform with the chafing on his inner thighs, blisters on his feet, and the "soldier's tan" on his face. His neck was dark and dirty, but his face, covered as it was by the mask for so many weeks was ghostly pale. There was a little blue on his sclera from the chemicals still not totally flushed out of his system and his cheeks were totally hair free from electric dendrite treatments.

This was all forgotten with the feeling of warm water cascading down his back. The warmth felt like it was washing away every ache and pain along with the rivulets of grime. The water pooling at his feet stayed brown for several minutes and his fingernails kept scraping away layer after layer of accumulated filth. Normally men were only allowed to have two minute showers on jump ships, to conserve valuable water during the long stretches through the void of space, but sad realization made the water a little less warm as Haylock considered why he could take as long a shower as he wanted. Over ten thousand men had jumped onto Paradise with him and now he was traveling back with a little less than two hundred.

He grabbed a handful of his stringy black hair and ground his teeth. There was no one else in the showers with him, but if there were, maybe they would not have been able to tell the tears apart from the shower. A scream was burning in his chest and he just wanted to belt it out and wail, but he put a lid on it and a laugh escaped instead. The laughter could not be as easily tamped down and it devolved into gagging giggles. He did not think any of it was funny. Just the opposite, he hated them so much, for what they'd done to so many men he had considered brothers, now just lost memories like his tears swirling down the drain.

Footsteps echoed in the shower room and Haylock found the strength to stop crying and straighten up. His eyes still closed and standing under the steaming water he asked, "Tan, is that you?"

"No."

The short answer came from a deep, heavily accented voice. Haylock turned and saw a stormtrooper in fatigues glaring at him. It was that Tellaz guy, the one following the commissar all the time. This was the first time Haylock had seen him without his armor and he left an impression that he committed war crimes for breakfast with his steel shark eyes and thick jaw. Behind him were two more black uniformed men, all three fixed him with a look that promised that they would put the boots to him if he made the slightest move.

"The commissar wishes to speak with you. Come with us."

Haylock turned off the hot water and nodded. The chill hit him, but it was not just the cold air. "Sure, sure. Let me just put on my clothes." A clean pair of trooper fatigues his size were in the lockers, where they always kept them, but after dressing and on instinct, Haylock reached out toward his mask on the wall too.

"No. No mask. Commissar's orders." Tellaz had come up beside Haylock and started pushing him toward the door. The High Ender would have protested, but two more stormtroopers were in the hallway and joined the three already with him. Flanked by so many men, he could not help but march in the direction they wanted him to go. He was wondering if this moment was ever going to come, but it was just happening sooner than he expected. They were going to kill him.

There was no one else in the hallways other than more stormtroopers, the further they walked, the more he saw. Most of them gave him passive looks of disinterest, but a few seemed curious. His ear briefly caught a whisper, "that's the guy", but otherwise, none of the five stormtroopers elucidated why they were escorting him. Yet if he did happen to pass by his friends, Tanlon, Mad, or Snell, would he risk asking them for help? What would they be able to do, other than just get dragged into Haylock's problem? No, he was on his own and slowly being marched toward wherever fate would have him.

Eventually they came to a large hatch that whined when pneumatic pressure forced it open. Haylock was shocked by what was on the other side. Instead of the exterior doors of an airlock like he was expecting, the stormtrooper goons had actually taken him to a commissar’s office and it was not just some regular commissar like Gourke, it was “Ironjaw” Schultz himself.

Seeing the Commissar in person and up close like this was worlds different than when he had addressed the troopers on Paradise. For one thing, neither of them had their masks on, so they could look each other in the eye. This frightened Haylock even more.

If Scultz had blank killer eyes like Tellaz, then that would have been expected, or pig eyes like Gourke, then at least familiar. Schultz had blue eyes of such crinkled compassion that every instinct in Haylock told him that something was wrong. He may have even turned back and fled had a rough shove from Tellaz not propelled him all the way into the office and blocked his only escape.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Ah, Trooper Haylock, glad you could make time for me. I appreciate it.” Schultz gestured to a plain metal chair in front of his tiny desk. “Please, take a seat.”

Haylock numbly obeyed and sat down, his feet locked together and he tried to keep his back as straight as possible. He didn’t know if it would be rude to stare too directly into the Senior Commissar’s eyes, so he compromised and stared at a mole on his left cheek. The hiss of the door behind him told Haylock that he was trapped in this room with a man who held his life in the palm of his hand.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

Haylock knew exactly why he was there, but he played it dumb. “No, sir.”

“Well, you made it past your tenth jump son. You get to retire now.”

Haylock didn’t know what to say to that, but the words came out, slow and stumbling. “Sir, do I? Do I get to retire?”

The sad look that deepened even further in Schultz’s eyes and the way he sagged into his chair made Haylock’s heart start to hammer in his chest.

“Son, I don’t want it to come to that. I want you to join my Stormtrooper Corps instead.”

If he had not sat down, Haylock might have fallen. As it was, the world felt like it was pulling him along in a tunnel without any directional input from him and he felt dizziness threaten to overtake him. Haylock forced the air in and out of his nostrils and relaxed. He didn’t need a physical gas mask to flip the switch and tone down the terror. He had faced death more times than he could count in his years and a short, gray haired man at a desk was certainly less frightening than a Screamer bearing down on you.

“I gave Gourke my answer before Paradise. I’m not interested in joining the Corps, sir.”

Schultz raised an eyebrow at the lack of title for Gourke and the newfound timbre in Haylock’s voice. He drummed his fingers on the desk and closed his eyes, just for a moment before they opened up again and a whole new person was sitting across from Haylock.

This was the Commissar he had expected to see, dead eyed and uncaring. The lines in his face ceased to be evidence of age and more so cracks in the stony visage of a pagan idol that bore no sympathy for its worshipers. He replied and the ice in his words almost made Haylock’s mask slip.

“Is that so?”

The presence of Tellaz behind him became more noticeable and Haylock held his breath, waiting for the inevitable strike from behind. If it was a bullet, would he feel the pain?

Yet nothing came and the Commissar sat there, waiting for his answer.

“Yes sir, it is so. I’ve done my time, my service to the Empire and Emperor. I’ve stalked through living factories where the machines have gnashing teeth and beaches where the water will eat your skin. I’ve known for a long time that my tenth jump was supposed to be my last jump, it’s an open secret that no one ever makes it past the tenth, but here I am. Is the Empire going to make good on her promises or are you going to kill me?”

To Haylock’s surprise, it was not Schultz who answered, but Tellaz. The pale brute laughed, a quick and harsh bark, that he quickly stowed back under his stoic bearing. Schultz gave his second in command an unknowable look and then stared straight back at Haylock. Again, his eyes had flipped and instead of threatening cold, there was something more surprising: curiosity.

“Trooper Haylock, just what does the average man think of doing his ten and out?”

Redirecting the question to Haylock took some of the steam out of his defiance and he blanked for an answer. It came to him after only a few seconds, thinking about his group of friendly Ones.

“Delusional, sir.”

“That’s a strange word choice, explain for me if you would.”

“Everyone knows instinctively that no one makes it past their tenth jump, there’s no hard evidence that they don’t, but no one has heard of anyone who has. It makes the situation hopeless.”

“And being hopeless is delusional?”

“No, what’s delusional is having hope despite the hopelessness. Everyone knows you join the Stormtrooper Corps on your ninth jump or die, but everyone secretly hopes that maybe they’ll be the exception.”

Schultz leaned back and looked at the ceiling with a sigh. “And when the time comes, the fear of the tenth jump makes them all sign up. Better to know you’ll live another day than jump into a hope that is not yet seen. Isn’t that right, Tellaz?”

The stormtrooper behind Haylock grunted in affirmation and Haylock was stunned by the candor that both of them were showing him. Gourke had tried wining and dining him, but Schultz was being surprisingly straight forward. There could be only one reason for being so comfortable to tell him all this.

“Sir, you didn’t answer my question. Are you going to kill me?”

Schultz starter for only a second and stared at Haylock before he broke out into a laugh that was shared by Tellaz too. Their deep voices made the small office echo in the din and Haylock didn’t know if they were laughing at him or what he said. After his chest stopped heaving, Schultz wiped a tear from his eye and shook his head.

“Such candor. Your profile mentioned that you had some issue with talking back, but I find your honesty to be really becoming of you. I don’t like to surround myself with yes men; isn’t that right Tellaz?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anyway, I certainly don’t want to kill you, no, no. I meant what I said earlier, I want you in the Corps. Imagine it, if a man did his ten jumps and then instead of retiring to civilian life, reupped as a Stormtrooper! I’m fully aware of the perception you spoke of and I’m certain that you can help us break that.”

Haylock felt a little pleased at the complementing words, but others had tried to win him over with a smooth tongue before. He shook his head and replied, “Sir, I don’t know what you can say or offer that would make me want to join.”

Schultz looked toward Tellaz and the other man pulled a wand out of his pocket. When he waved it a few times, Tellaz nodded and said, “It’s clear.”

Iron Jaw Schultz leaned across his tiny table and put a hand on Haylock’s shoulder. This look was the most fearsome one of all. In those eyes swirled every facet of hate, sorrow, and pity that Haylock had become familiar with in the faces of men dying or otherwise killing.

“Son. I’m going to tell you the truth.”