_ _ _Hiiro
The first thought I had when I opened my eyes was that I'd gone colorblind. My four-poster bed, normally a range of earthy wood hues, vibrant dyed silks and ornate inlay scrollwork, was flat black daubed with white. So was the ceiling beyond it. And the walls, and the furniture. It was a curious nightmare, but it was certainly a lot nicer than most, so I closed my eyes and tried to wake up again. My second attempt wasn't any more successful than my first.
"Good morning, my Hiiro."
And then there was Bim, wearing nothing but a thin blanket of ash, lying next to me on the half-incinerated remains of my bed. Her skin was a sharp relief from the flat background. Her inviting amber eyes sparkling with impish delight. She was smiling the big loopy grin of a happy idiot instead of her usual bared fangs and piercing eyes grimace.
I was powerless to do anything but drink in the sight of her. I'd only ever painted in murderstrokes of red, but some small part of me held captive in that moment wanted to capture this perfect instant on canvas.
I didn't remember much of the fight or celebration yesterday, just little bits that came in flashes. My entire room was charred and splattered with flame suppressant yet the killing flames inside of me felt… sated? More than that, I didn't feel the same crushing dread that'd been haunting me this past month. I struggled for the word and felt like an idiot when I'd finally found it.
I felt relaxed for the first time since I'd left Intatenrup.
Then the rest of my brain finally woke up and ruined it. I was naked. Bim was naked. Together in the same bed. My guts did their level best to crawl up into my throat while I looked for something that wasn't burnt cinders to cover myself with. Bim seemed content to watch me with her knowing golden eyes, smiling the whole time.
I couldn't remember anything! But she seemed happy and I felt different, so we must have done something. With the two of us naked in the same bed there was only one something that came to mind. I couldn't remember a damned thing!
"I'm sorry-" I started, the words slipping from me before I knew why.
Bim recoiled from my apology, a subtle expression of bemusement creeping around the edges of her radiant smile. Ash fluttered from her skin as she moved, exposing more and more of her supple curves.
"Why are you sorry? You were and are a welcomed balm upon my existence."
She lazily rolled out of the burnt remains of my bed, the last vestiges of ash falling away and leaving her bare majesty exposed. How could I not remember that from last night? She was a goddess in the flesh.
"If you are not opposed, I'd welcome the opportunity to do that again once you are sufficiently recovered."
My body was already betraying my answer before my mind caught up. Do that again? Hell yes… as soon as I figured out what the hell it was I'd even done in the first place. I was torn between digging through the armoire for some clothes that weren't burnt into rags and just throwing myself at her then and there, hoping my body knew what it was doing because I sure as hell didn't.
A commotion outside the door took the decision out of my hands. Zoe-Esther was trying to steer someone away without breeching decorum and that someone didn't seem to care. A second later Alice poked her head in with a put upon Zoe looking indignantly over her shoulder before I could find anything more substantial than my hands to hide the scraps of my modesty.
For a long moment Alice balked at the sight. Her eyes meet mine, the slightest hint of a knowing grin on her lips. Her gaze drifted over to Bim, who hadn't thought to cover herself in the slightest, and Alice's grin widened. She looked back to me, then back to Bim, then back to me, then back to Bim. Her eyes flicked between our faces and our naked flesh in equal measure.
"Do you mind?!" I demanded, snapping out of my embarrassed stupor.
Ignoring everything, and pointedly looking at the charred ceiling, Alice found her own voice. "How sober are you and are you a good swimmer?"
* * *
The palace was in shambles. Some small portion of the maids were already combing through the aftermath like a dispersed team of rescue workers following a natural disaster. The much larger portion of the working girls and every vigia I saw were still laying or slumped where they had passed out; more often than not, locked in each others arms. There were plenty of unlikely pairings as we walked past yet those few groggy eyes that cracked open all made their way to me and Bim. I could only hope the entire estate didn't know more about what I'd got up to last night than I did. Based on the empty bottles, spent needles and smoked butts, I got the impression I wasn't the only one who would be struggling to recall more than flashes of what had happened last night.
Alice led Bim and I to the main hall, picking up stragglers and half-sleeping mercs along the way. Leeroy was slumped in an armchair waiting for us, looking utterly exhausted in more ways than one. He had a dozen mercs with him already and more were stumbling, staggering or being corralled into the impromptu meeting. More than one of them cast a knowing glance to me and Bim, some smiling or tossing a coy wink at us, others just glared. Bim clinging to my arm possessively wasn't helping the matter. She had the same drunkard's smile plastered on her face since I'd woken up next to her.
"While you were all having a good time…" Leeroy started, pausing long enough to stare in my direction. "I finished renegotiating with Celio. Short version, we're still employed and our payout just got about ten times bigger."
The disgruntled mercs took the news well, but didn't spare the energy to voice their approval.
"Naturally, there's a few catches." Leeroy continued with a yawn. "The first being that we're getting a sizable advance, but the funds are…" He took a long blink, struggling to open his eyes afterward. "I'm too tired for this shit. Clancy, explain."
Leeroy didn't even bother getting up to find a bed. He passed out where he sat, allowing Clancy to pick up where he'd left off. The bespectacled man had to consult his datapad before speaking.
"Right, while we are getting the advance funds they're presently tied up in non-liquid assets. Celio's accountants have given us assurances that the funds are guaranteed up to ninety percent of their market value, even in the event of a short sell, however they are also secured with a double redundant non-fungible encryption— which is quite fascinating, really."
"Umm. In Standard please?" Lacy asked.
"Right, bullet points." Clancy had to think about it for a minute. "Celio needs you to go get a few OSDs from one of his sea steads while he and his men… recover. These OSDs are the keys he needs to get us our money. Said sea stead locale is likely being monitored and any overt approach would be a tempting target for the enemy. A small team of divers will boat out nearby and then make a clandestine retrieval. The remainder of the outfit will be running camouflage at the nearby private beach."
"So we're getting a beach day with some paid diving time?" Chad asked, playing with a gold stud in his earlobe.
"Yes. That about sums it up." Clancy confirmed without looking up from his datapad.
"When do we leave?" Jhordan asked, face spread in a wide grin.
"Immediately."
* * *
It was amazing what you could buy if you knew the right people. I was no stranger to dangerous combination of low scruples and a loaded wallet, but it never occurred to me that you could buy a beach. The though hadn't even crossed my mind that we were going to a private beach until I drove past the ferrocrete and chain-link fence and read the signs.
[Private Beach - Enforced by Sniper]
Even if I couldn't read, the pictographs painted a pretty clear image of what happened to trespassers.
"That'd be an easy job." Lacy—one of the outfit's leading markswomen— idly commented from my backseat.
"What?" I asked, flicking my eyes to my rearview.
"Covering this beach. Small flat target area, high contrast surroundings, cliffside hills for a vantage point and hide, predictable wind, never have the sun in your face. It'd make a nice retirement job."
"Let's hope Celio phoned ahead to let them know we're coming." I mumbled, glancing up at the cliffs as I made our final approach.
The mercs hit the sand and within minutes they'd secured a beachhead. Blankets, parasols and loungers were scattered. A handful of different games each had their own spaces alloted. Shovels and buckets appeared near the waterline and sandcastle fortifications followed shortly after. The scent of grilling food and burning charcoal reminded me that most of us hadn't ate since last night at best. It was all so normal. Too normal, at least on the surface.
But then I'd spot a trio of rifles leaning together barrels up at the edge of a ball game. Or I'd notice how every vehicle was parked in a way that we could all run like hell at a moment's notice. Or how those small humble sandcastles were sporting deeper and deeper moats until they started resembling trenches. Even the mercs, myself included, seemed a little too caution to the wind for it to be genuine. It was impossible to see us as anything but a bunch of professional killers. It was obvious in all the small ways: the pale scars and faded tattoos that stood out from tanned skin, the sharp attentive glances at our surroundings, the lean athletic bodies sculpted from combat fitness, the spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination that made every game drag on a little too long.
"Isn't this a little reckless?" I asked Pauz—a burly ink-up bruiser of a man—as he flipped a meat log on a charcoal grill. "What happened to being 'at war'?"
"War or no, people need to blow off steam. They need to party, relax and bump uglies in dark. Fighting is part of life. If we stop living just because someone is fighting someone else, we stop being human." Pauz finished, slapping a perfectly seared rectangular patty over some fried eggs then between some leafy greens. He deftly wrapped it all up between thick, split-knuckled fingers and handed over the chow. "We could all be dead tomorrow, so we live today. Anything less is insult to the people that died so we could make it this far."
"I don't know about that…" I said hesitantly, before starting on my breakfast wrap. Even with such simple ingredients, it tasted pretty good.
"You may not," Pauz made a show of cracking some eggs, keeping himself entertained in a performance for two. "But they do. Don't knock it 'till you try it."
Regardless of what the big man had said, I couldn't bring myself to relax. So I tried to relax a little harder, but that was a dead end road going nowhere fast. Knowing that it would either come to me or it wouldn't, I made my way back to the blanket I'd claimed as my little kingdom amidst the sand. Bim was there sat upright and cross legged like some mystic meditating, the same half-drunk smile still plastered on her face. Only now the smile didn't quite reach her eyes as she gazed attentively at the beach and the waves beyond.
"It would seem these activities are enjoyable, though I fail to comprehend why." Bim offered.
"It's a human thing." I said with a shrug. "Though I don't really get it either. We didn't have a lot of ocean beaches back where I come from. Too cold."
"I'm curious to the appeal of sand. It is coarse, treacherous and has an irritating tendency to cling to everything it touches."
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
"Don't tell me you'd rather this be a gravel beach?" I tried to make a joke out of it, but the words came out as more of a conspiratorial growl.
"Yes, I would. Though my true preference is that we return to you chambers where everything is far more tolerable to the touch." Her gaze darted to me, her hands already moving to interlock with mine before I cut her off.
"About last night…" I started before realizing I had no idea what the hell I was even trying to ask. Bim just stared at me, the hardness leaving her eyes as she played her sight over me. "Was I-"
"You were magnificent." She interrupted.
"Oh." I could hear the surprise in my voice. I only hoped she didn't recognize it for what it was. "I'm glad you enjoyed it." Whatever it was I'd even done…
A dark shadow crept over me before I could find the answer buried in my memory. Chad, standing tall and lean at the edge of my blanket, the sunlight barely bouncing off his impossibly dark skin. He threw a duffel bag at my feet without getting any closer.
"You said you can swim. Put that on then get on the boat."
* * *
I'd never sailed a boat before, but since the mercs thought of me as 'the driver' I was forced to learn on the fly. As it turns out, sailing a speedboat was a lot like driving a car. We were moving fast over the open sea, the wind in my face and the salty sea breeze in my semi-open wounds and burns. I could have done without that last bit, but the rest was nice. Sailing out into the sea made me realize how much I missed the open roads of my homeworld. I'm sure there were probably a few actual inter-city routes somewhere in this planet, but I'd only seen the winding switchback streets of Crucibab so far and I wasn't a fan.
Before I could really get into the groove of sailing we reached a chunk of ocean that seemed indistinguishable from any other, but the boat's computer told me to stop here so I did. I took a peek over the side as I dropped anchor and the colors surprised me; oranges, pinks, greens and every shade of blue I could think of— it was like taking a look through a window into an alien world. Some small part of me wondered if this was how Bim saw things, ever-shifting and strange while completely immerse in something you knew of but didn't really understand.
"Aight, has any of y'all actually been diving before?" Chad asked.
"Not like this, but I swam in some lakes back in the day." I said.
Idris just shook her head while Lacy sighted down one of the bulky waterproof rifles that'd been waiting for us on the boat. What followed was about an hour's lecture of all the ways we could die from equipment failure, or pressure injury, or stupidity, or just about any other way Chad could think of as we all geared before rolling over the side and into the water.
We floundered around for a few minutes looking like exactly what we were, a bunch of rookie divers that only had the slightest idea of what we were doing. Once we'd gotten the basics figured out and we'd all tried out our fancy underwater rifles, Chad pulled what I'd thought was a fuel tank off the underside of our boat and waved us over too him. The tube in question turned out to be a missile or something. Once we got it pointed the right way all we had to do was hold on. The sea stead wasn't that far, a little over six kilometers from where I'd parked the boat. We covered that inside of ten minutes— which felt a hell of a lot faster when it was the ocean rushing through my hair than it did the wind.
The water was fairly clear but I still didn't see the thick metal pipes of the sea stead's legs until we'd nearly crashed into them. There was a group of fish that reminded me of empty bags with tails circling the pipes like some weird underwater tornado. It was breathtaking—or my bottled air was getting thin—and if I wasn't on the job I woud have spent some time just watching them. As interesting as the sight was, I didn't spare it much thought as I headed up to the surface to get to work. I didn't really know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn't a palace in the middle of the ocean.
There was maybe three meters of industrial-looking catwalks, docks and random pipes, and then on top of that was a palace. It wasn't as boxy as most buildings I'd seen on world, but it wasn't quite rounded either. The entire thing had one thick coat of off-cream paint that might have been either white or yellow at one point before the elements had taken their time with it. Our crack team of amateurs found a stairway we could reach from the water and made the loudest, slowest, most obnoxious covert entry I'd ever witnessed or participated in. Luckily, no one was around to notice except us. Once the worst of the underwater gear was shed and stowed things started moving a little more smoothly.
The ocean palace was huge, so we split up into pairs to speed things up. Celio hadn't been here in years—even if this place looked like he'd just been here yesterday—so his memory of where he'd kept his things was spotty at best. I would have thought the keys to a humble fortune would be the kind of thing he'd keep a better watch on, but when you got rich enough I guess a few tens of millions was pocket change.
Idris and I started out slow. Her background must have been a little more upstanding than mine because she wasn't a very good burglar. Fortunately my criminal skills were good enough for two. We moved from one neat and tidy room to the next, leaving a trail of disorganized or displaced belongings behind us. At a glance, it seemed like Celio had let his maids keep the place tidy after he left. With any luck no one would get fired over the state we were leaving the sea stead in as we ransacked the place.
It was always a uniquely personal experience to snoop through someone's home while they weren't there. It was a peek into their mind, beyond the image they projected to the world. Even if I'd known nothing of Celio, I came to a comparable image of the man by the time we'd tossed the fifth room.
Appearances were everything to a man like him. There weren't very many private rooms and those we searched were bland and utilitarian. Power was secondary to opinion, the arrayed collections and dusty oddities on display were all things that someone else would value but meant nothing to the man who owned them. It wasn't enough for Celio to be able to take what he pleased, he wanted whoever was standing before him to know it. To know on every level that he was a man beyond what they could ever be.
Normally, that would have been enough to make me hate him, but it didn't. Celio wasn't stomping his way to the top on the dreams and hopes of others, he never set out to make anyone feel lesser. Celio had a neat trick of being able to stand tall without forcing everyone else to bow first. Or maybe his trick was how he made everyone forget they were bowing in the first place. But I'd seen the cracks in his mask. I knew just how fragile the podium he'd place himself on was. His life was a mirage in a smokescreen, always one strong gust away from being scattered into nothingness.
"Did you find anything yet?" Idris asked, patting down an entire hallway's worth of coats to check their pockets.
"I've found plenty, just not what we're looking for." I answered. Idris sidled up to me as she kept up her unobtrusive search.
"You and Bim seemed pretty friendly this morning…" She offered.
"That's not really your business." I answered curtly, glad that our work meant I could keep my back turned to her.
"I'll drop it."
"Thanks-"
"But first I've gotta ask. How did that even work? I mean, she's an alien right? Does she have everything like a normal girl down there? Or was it all… Tentacles, goop and fire?"
It was a question I hadn't even thought to ask yet. From what I saw this morning I was pretty sure that was normal for a woman, but I had no idea what it was like past that. How the hell could I not remember what I'd done last night! I could have had the best mind-blowing night ever and I'd blacked out like a chump.
"I don't know. It was… normal, I guess." I finally said after way too long of a pause.
"What do you mean you don't know?" Idris asked, abandoning her search to fix her attention on me. "Wait, were you a virgin? Was she your first? Ohmygod that's so cute!"
I felt my cheeks reddening and for once it wasn't the killing fire inside of me.
"No! I mean, nothing happened between us last night-"
"Botshit. The way she's been ogling you up all day, I know what a girl looks like after she's had a few round trips to cloud nine. So dish. What kind of hardware is she rocking? Inquiring minds want to know!"
A long, choppy blast of gunfire echoed from the floor above us. I snatched up the blocky rifle I'd been loaned and ran towards it. Idris found her priorities and followed a few seconds after.
"Normal people run AWAY from gun shots." She hissed.
"We can't all fight in power armor." I countered, backtracking through the rooms we'd searched until I found a staircase.
"If I get shot, I'm going to bleed all over you."
We took the stairs cautiously. I was pretty sure Idris had her rifle pointed right at my back as I led the way, but I didn't turn my head to check. My own rifle felt like a lead brick, slow and cumbersome in my hands. I wished I had my revolver. And a cigarette.
I made do with the steady burn of the killing flames inside of me as I crested the stairs.
Lacy was waiting on a knee in a left-hand doorway, rifle trained dead-center of my skull in that split second before I'd even spotted her. We both lowered our aim. She had me dead to rights and we both knew it. Lucky thing she was on my side. She answered before I could ask.
"Yeah, that was us. We've got the drives. We can leave."
I took a breath to respond. It stank of odd gunsmoke, splintered wood and blood. Now that I was closer, I could see flecks of red splattered inside the room she was at. Somewhere buried in my memory, another doorway just like this one had beckoned me closer. It made me want to freeze up but the heat inside my bones compelled me to keep moving forward.
I saw everything at once. Servants' quarters, housing the skeleton crew that had been keeping this place in order for the master's return. The pattern of the blood, a linear scope of violence from a single stationary attacker to the cowering crowd. Chad clutching a bundle of hardened thumb drives in one hand, a smoking gun in the other. The family, the eldest vainly trying to shield the youngest with their bodies. I saw it all but one thing stood out in my mind.
A three-year old child failing to shake her mother awake, blood weakly gushing from the tiny bullet holes in her chest and arms and stomach.
My fist connected with Chad's jaw before anyone could even blink. He rocked back a step without flinching, riding the blows momentum.
"What the hell is wrong with you!" I roared.
"Old guy had the drives, the rest saw us take them. Discreet means no witnesses."
His voice was ice cold. I snapped my anger over to Lacy, still standing at the doorway half-in, half-out. She hadn't pulled the trigger but she hadn't stopped it either.
"Who were they going to tell!? A nosy fish? There's no one out here but us! They didn't need to die!"
"They didn't need to be here either." Chad stated, still flat calm. "They made their choice."
"I case you didn't notice, we're in the middle of the ocean. Where else were they going to go?"
"Hero, take it easy-" Idris said from the hall.
"NO!" The word tore from my lips in a snarl. No to calming down. No to this senseless killing. No to being so fucking emotionally detached from what we did every time someone pulled the trigger. "You killed seven innocent people just-" I couldn't find the words. Red-hot rage was clawing its way up my throat.
"People die every day." Idris countered. Still standing outside, still saying in every way but words that her hands were clean. That she wasn't involved with this.
"How many people do you think we killed yesterday? Six-hundred? Eight? A thousand? Those are just the ones we know of." Lacy added.
"That's different…" I said, but I couldn't find any conviction to lend the words.
"Because they chose to be there?" Chad asked, finally dropping his gaze to look me in the eyes. He had his body rigidly under control, but there was a raw hate burning in his eyes. "You might be right about them. Maybe it was different because it was kill or be killed. What about all them regular folks who suddenly had their backyard turned into a warzone? Sure, we tried to limit collateral but shit happens-"
"Chad," Idris interrupted. "You're not helping."
"No. I'm not. I'm teaching the Rookie a lesson so he doesn't get us all killed." He said, bending over so we could be face to face and he could spit every word at me without looking down. "You want to stand there and pretend your shit don't stink because you don't have the guts to stand by it. Look at them."
I did, hoping to find enough spite that I could throw another punch without thinking about it. It was a familiar sight that still hit me like a sucker punch to the guts and set the heat inside me burning. How many people had I killed in cold blood? Thrity? Fifty? I could tell myself it was always different, because they were murders or lunatics or they'd done things to kids, but was it? How many times had I painted a wall with an unarmed person and walked away without thinking about it?
Too many.
"It's her or me. Them or us." Chad said the words meticulously like an aggravated instructor would to a slow student. "You want to live long enough to see a paymail? Then get with the fucking program."
"No one paid you to murder these people." But that wasn't true, was it? We were paid to be here and to get the job done. The flames burning inside of guts whelmed up in anticipation.
"And how much did you get paid to burn down them slums? Hmm!?!" Chad's composure finally cracked as he spat the question to my face. "Here we are six weeks later and they're still pulling bodies out of the rubble! You got one thing right. I'm a killer, that's what I do. But I ain't not fucking murderer. That's what you are."
The words cut true. He could have slapped me in the face right then and I wouldn't have noticed. I was a murderer, in every sense of the word and it made my blood boil. My bones were made of solid flame, my lungs were a blazing furnace and my heart was like the molten core of a star. The temperature in the room shot up ten degrees, then thirty. I was standing in the middle of it with my hands locked into white-hot fists that I wanted to smash into something— someone.
Idris sidled away from the door. Lacy pivoted on the spot, making sure she could snap up her aim any second. I barely noticed either. My eyes were locked on Chad and his on me.
"You don't like that do you? Truth hurts, don't it? What you gonna do about? Smack me? Shoot me? Burn me up, like you did all them other folks?"
I wanted to. I wanted to so badly it burned.
If I called his bluff, I'd kill him and we both knew it. Sweat was beading across his face but I could tell that was just the heat. His eyes were set. He was begging me to show my true colors and get it over with. He was right for all the wrong reasons. If I did, I was only proving him right about me. If I killed him and called it justice then I really was just a murderer.
With great effort, I throttled the killing heat inside of me.
"That's what I thought you little punk as bitch. One last thing-"
His fist was lodged in my stomach before I could blink and it took every scrap of willpower I had to keep from exploding into a fireball then and there.
"You ever throw hands at me again, I will bust your skull open and bury my foot so far up your ass that you won't ever walk again. Now let's get the fuck out of here so you can go back to playing house with your lil alien bitch, but don't you dare forget that you're elbow deep in this shit with the rest of us."