Hiran took a deep breath as he strode down one of the busy streets in downtown Pragha. The air was laden with the caustic sting of exhaust fumes and the stench of powdering asphalt, but after all that time in space, he found it all glorious.
The cries of street vendors rang cacophonously from the depths of their metal carts and into his ears, underlaid by the torrent of footfalls and the murmured collective of a thousand conversations occurring all at once in the bustling street.
The Madhyan locals gave him a wide berth as he passed through their midst, of course. He towered over them, with the tallest Ghandarnian mortal barely standing as tall as his midriff.
But there were many others besides Ghandarnians, too. Hiran had already spotted dozens of faces with Shanian features and several Asharicans—with their pale complexions and light-colored eyes—in the crowd.
Ghandarnians favored white and tan-colored tunics and trousers, and Hiran saw many of them attired in this manner. In contrast, the Shanians tended to favor brightly colored multi-hued clothes, with voluminous sleeves and baggy trousers. The Asharicans were much duller hue-wise in their attire, wearing shades of drab brown, olive, or blue, and the fabric of their clothes seemed to be much thicker and rougher.
The diversity of fashion and complexions astounded him. He was very aware that much had changed in Ghandarna since the end of his previous life, but to see it for himself all packed into a single street was something else entirely.
Hiran spotted a food cart then, and he strode toward it. The vendor was a balding Ghandarnian man in his middle years wearing a grease-stained apron over his clothes. He cowered as Hiran approached.
“What… what do you want?” the vendor asked, before baring his teeth in a blatantly false smile as he added a belated ‘sir’ to his question.
“One of those milk cakes you have,” Hiran said, pulling his credit chit from his belt pouch and tapping it against the cart’s payment pad. A small green light flashed briefly upon its surface to indicate that a half-credit had been transferred to the vendor’s account.
The man gulped nervously and fumbled a wrapped cake into Hiran’s hand, which was just slightly over twice as large as his own. He then waved for Hiran to be on his way.
Thanks to my holographic module, they think I’m just some mercenary with Shrav augmentations that make me freakishly oversized and not a Starforged, or they would be bowing and scraping nonstop right now, Hiran thought, as he unwrapped his snack and began munching away. The cake was stale and dry, and its milk filling was at least a day, if not two or three, old, but he lost himself in the flavors as they spread across his tongue. This is much, much better than nutrient bars.
Bei Feng had fed him the night before, of course. The scholar had organized a small banquet in his manor, setting a massive dining table resplendent with platters of braised pork, roast duck, and steamed vegetables. A servant kept Hiran’s rice bowl constantly full. Another did the same for Maxwell.
Lila ate sparingly and declined any further food beyond a single bowl of rice, a small strip of meat, and a pinch of vegetables. The Savant hadn’t wanted to overload her organic systems, she’d claimed.
Hiran and Maxwell hadn’t had any such qualms. They’d gorged themselves, cleaning out every platter on Bei Feng’s table and polishing off a fair sample of the scholar’s liquor, which was served in bottles of white ceramic.
But the cuisine had been Shanian. Hiran had enjoyed the meal of course, and he was very grateful to Bei Feng for the feast. It was only that quite a long time had passed since he’d last eaten a traditional Ghandarnian milk cake, and awful as the cake had been, Hiran had thoroughly relished it.
If I weren’t Starforged, this would probably have given me food poisoning, he thought, as he threw the empty wrapper away into a public waste disposal bin. Alright. Enough of that. I’m here to do a job.
Bei Feng had contacted the Bureau of Mercenaries the night before and registered Hiran as a fifteenth-ranker. There was no need for him to use a false name, the scholar had claimed, because over the last hundred years, three out of ten boys born across the Ghandarna Empire had been named Hiran, so no one would know that the Godbreaker had, indeed, returned.
I bet Narayana doesn’t like that. Hiran grinned as he checked his Ajna Interface.
Madhya Mercenary Profile #8839561-A
Operative name: Hiran_15613
Realm of Origin: Ghandarna Empire, Anava
Guild Affiliation: None, freelance
Standing: Fifteenth Ranker
Gig record: 0 successes, 0 failures
Hirer’s Overview
Note: all of the information below has been provided voluntarily by the operative and has undergone no verification. Hirers should peruse and proceed at their own discretion.
Close-combat specialist, proficient with most firearms
Bei Feng had promised to pull what strings he could with the Bureau so that Hiran could get more difficult contracts and rise up in the ranks more quickly. Meanwhile, Hiran had figured he might as well get his feet wet, so he’d accepted the first contract available to him as a fifteenth ranker: to subdue a bunch of thugs that had been terrorizing and extorting money from the vendors located in the street in which he was now standing.
Apparently, the levy guardsmen can’t handle them, Hiran thought, scrolling through the details of his contract in his Ajna Interface as he absentmindedly bought a foam cup of spiced tea from another vendor. They’ve got to be a bit more formidable than the usual hoodlum.
Or perhaps not, he mused. The contract carried an annotation signed off on by the local levy guard-captain. According to the annotation, the hired mercenary wasn’t even obligated to apprehend the thugs. A swift and summary execution or maiming would suffice, as long as the thugs didn’t trouble the clients again.
And these are my clients. Hiran swept his gaze down the street, taking in the collection of vendors. They’d pooled their resources together to hire a mercenary, promising him a grand prize of two hundred credits in return.
Maxwell had scoffed at the contract. No mercenary, not even the most wretched fifteenth ranker, would waste any time on this, he’d said.
And the levy guardsmen are either too occupied elsewhere or simply can’t be bothered. Hiran sipped slowly at his cup of tea. It was quite horrid, but he enjoyed it nevertheless, because it reminded him of his early days as an apprentice warrior, when he used to make tea for Master Vikram and Master Ibumi on Mount Kataish. So with both guardsmen and mercenaries not wanting to deal with them, these thugs have been giving the folk here a hard time for several weeks already.
Hiran finished his drink slowly and checked the time in his Ajna Interface. It was half-past ten in the morning. He’d slept well past dawn in a comfortable bedroom in Bei Feng’s manor and made his way to the hangar, only to find Lila working on the ship. Maxwell had already left an hour ago, she’d said, to turn in his khigar horn and get a new Shrava augmentation to replace the rickety contraption hanging from his right shoulder.
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He’ll be back in a day or two. Hiran walked over to a waste disposal bin and tossed his cup into it. We’ll see about making some real money, then.
According to Lila, the woman’s awakening had caused a huge mess in the cargo hold she’d been in, but that wasn’t anything that couldn’t be fixed with a bit of sweeping and vacuuming. The real damage lay in Chaoswing’s ablative armor plating, which would cost a small fortune to replace and refit.
Then there was the rearming of the ship’s missile batteries, which would be astoundingly pricey in Madhya’s markets. On top of that, Lila had suggested several more upgrades to Chaoswing, notably a fully oscillating gun turret with a complement of plasma lances. Simply rearming and repairing the ship fully and replacing Lila’s primary processors would leave Hiran and his companions with just over a thousand credits. He would need to make much more if he wanted to upgrade the ship at all.
Bei Feng is offering room and board, so we don’t have to worry about that, at least. Hiran strolled past a vendor selling secondhand clothes, most of them styled in Ghandarnian fashion. Of course, there was nothing that would fit him. The vendor, a skinny young woman, smiled nervously at him.
“Uh, fancy a cloth belt?” she said, holding up a battered length of fabric. She forced an apologetic smile to her face. “If not, I don’t think there’s anything for you.”
“I know. Don’t worry about it.” Hiran gave the vendor an amiable nod and continued his stroll.
Hiran was wearing only his spacesuit beneath an oversized tunic-and-trousers-set Bei Feng had his personal tailors fashion the night before. He had his gunbelt on, but he’d left Azure Fang back on board the ship. Waving an Aetheric Weapon around would attract attention he didn’t need or want at this point.
He found his thoughts drifting back to the woman named Anika. Bei Feng’s servants had set up a makeshift medical suite in his meditation chamber. Anika was still unconscious, and according to Lila, would remain so for at least the rest of the day, if not longer. The Savant would check on her periodically, and if anything untoward happened, she would contact Hiran via his Ajna Interface immediately.
Hiran pushed his ruminations about Anika aside and refocused on the task at hand. She was not Keyi, just some poor, unfortunate woman who’d been dragged into all this nonsense by Maruti. He would find a way to send her back to Anava as soon as possible.
“Hey! Hey, you there!” a vendor on the opposite side of the street shouted. He was a short, squat man with a scraggly gray beard, and he sold used data processors, judging by the stenciled sign above his cart. “Big fellow! I’m talking to you!”
“What is it?” Hiran asked, walking over.
“What in the name of Narayana’s fetid balls are you doing?” the vendor demanded, wagging his finger in the direction of Hiran’s face. “We hired you to take care of some trouble for us, didn’t we? Instead, you’re just having a good time, eating, drinking, and flirting with Mirena over there!”
Mirena? Hiran followed the processor vendor’s gaze and found himself looking back at the clothing vendor’s cart. She was in a heated conversation with a middle-aged Shanian woman over a pair of trousers. Hiran chuckled and shook his head. “I wasn’t flirting. Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not being silly!” the vendor retorted. “And you’re not doing your job!”
“Seems to me like you really expect a lot out of two hundred credits,” Hiran said, arching his brow. He raised his hand to forestall the tide of protests that threatened to splutter forth from between the vendor’s trembling lips. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. When you look like me, you don’t have to go searching for trouble. Oftentimes, it finds you readily enough. I like that line about Narayana, by the way.”
“What?” The vendor clapped his hands over his mouth and looked around nervously. Blasphemy was still a capital offence in Ghandarna, it seemed, with the caveat that there were no longer enough Enforcers or levy guardsmen around for that law to truly mean anything.
Hiran continued his stroll down the street. He was nearing its end, and he would turn around and start walking back down the way he’d come if he had to.
But he didn’t. The crowd, which had steered well clear of him, suddenly peeled away entirely from his vicinity to reveal a quartet of men standing in his way. They were all powerfully built, the shortest of them standing well over seven feet tall, and they had bulky Shrava augmentations in place of their arms.
These were the thugs that had been terrorizing his clients. The biggest among them—possibly their leader—took a step forward and jabbed a metal finger at Hiran.
“You’re the fool these idiots hired to deal with us, aren’t you?” the leader demanded. “You’re going to regret taking on this contract, merc, but not as much as your stupid clients will. We’re going to kill a bunch of them today, just for giggles.”
Panicked shouts rolled down the length of the street. Nearby vendors began running away, but those further back stayed, reluctant to leave the means of their livelihood behind and equally eager to see if their investment would pay off.
Hiran sighed and quickly scanned the leader with his Ajna Interface.
Verstein Limbic Augmentation (left)
Grade 2 enhanced strength and resilience
Built-in electrified maul
Aggregate Retail cost (Madhya): 500 Credits
Verstein Limbic Augmentation (right)
Grade 2 enhanced strength and resilience
Built-in retractable forearm blade
Aggregate Retail cost (Madhya): 500 Credits
The thug frowned, obviously having detected Hiran’s scan. He extended his maul and blade from his metallic forearms and stalked forward, a cruel, sadistic smile on his face.
A moment later, he was facedown on the floor, lying amidst a loose pile of his broken teeth. Hiran winced at the blood covering the knuckles of his right fist. I think I overdid it. He’s not dead though, so that’s good.
Cries of disbelief rippled over the rest of the thugs. They extended blades and saws from their arms as well.
Hiran crouched down and wiped his hand on the back of their leader’s jacket, before looking the next closest one in the eye. “Listen. Just take this fellow on the floor and promise not to come back here anymore. If you can do that, we’ll call it quits. What do you say?”
The thug he’d been talking to simply grunted angrily and charged. Another followed him. Hiran smacked one across the side of his head, knocking him off his feet and spinning him a full circle in the air. He caught the thug’s skull on the instep of his foot before it could crash against the synthcrete surface of the street and let him hit the floor roughly but safely.
He punched the third thug in the stomach, folding the man over and driving the air from his lungs. The thug sank to his knees and gasped.
Hiran patted him gently on the shoulder. “There, there. Take your time. You’ll be fine in a bit. You might be vomiting blood for the next day or two, but you’ll recover, as long as you don’t do anything too stupid.”
The fourth thug unleashed a string of obscenities. He reached into his jacket, took out a machine-pistol, and emptied its magazine at Hiran.
Hiran could have dodged the gunfire easily, but the torrent of bullets would then slice into the crowd behind him. So he cycled a small amount of Aether into his Sun Circuits, raised his hands, and executed a rapid series of Fallen Spiral techniques from [Woven Cloud].
Threads of Aether spiraled from his palms to coalesce into a net that caught every single one of the twenty bullets launched from the barking barrel of the thug’s weapon. Hiran inhaled sharply as he drew them all into his right hand and clenched his fist over them. He exhaled and let a mangled clump of lead fall from his grasp to thump painfully against the shoulder of the man he’d punched in the stomach.
“Hurrk…” the third thug wheezed, trying to clutch his shoulder while also grabbing his abdomen. It was too much for him, it seemed, as his eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he fell over, completely unconscious.
“Oops. Sorry about that.” Hiran grunted in annoyance and waved irritably at the gunman. “Look what you’ve done. I was hoping you and that fellow there would be able to carry your two other friends away from here, seeing as you both would still at least be conscious. Now I don’t think that’s going to work out.”
“What? Who are you? How did you do that?” the last thug squealed in fear, before grabbing another magazine from his belt and ejecting the spent one from his weapon.
Hiran closed the distance between them and gave the thug a solid kick between the legs, causing him to keel over, agonized whimpers rolling from his lips as he did so.
Problem solved, I guess, he thought, dusting his hands off, before turning around to his clients. “Now, now, there’s no need for applause. I…”
No one was clapping or cheering. A sea of sullen stares met him instead. And then the vendors returned to their business. Angry murmurs reached his ears.
“Bloody showoff.”
“Should have killed the idiots to make sure they never come back. Stupid softhearted fool.”
“We paid too much for this.”
Hiran felt his brow twitching irritably. His Ajna Interface chimed, then.
200 credits have been deposited into your account.
Great. Just great. Hiran turned away, intending to find a quieter place where he could browse the Bureau’s bulletin board and hopefully find another contract. He’d barely taken a single step when he heard another voice.
It was cold and sharp, like a blade, and it froze him in his tracks.
“I want to know who you are, too,” it said.