Isabella was staring, shocked, at her phone.
Enrique had sent her a text.
She felt her soul go cold as she read, "Mike killed himself."
She quickly responded, "Where are you?"
She set her phone down on the couch next to her and sighed. She hadn't suspected that Mike was suicidal.
I should have known… He didn't respond to my text today… I could have done more… Maybe he wouldn't have done it if I had reached out in person sooner or if I had stayed with him yesterday morning.
Isabella knew that it was ridiculous to think it was her fault or that she could have somehow stopped him, but she couldn't stop those thoughts from running amok in her head.
Her phone buzzed.
She picked it up and read, "The kings shilling."
She rapidly responded. "Do you need to be alone?"
Isabella searched for the address. It was a pub in downtown London, about fifteen minutes from campus.
"No"
"I'm omw."
Isabella got up and grabbed her jacket on her way to the door. She pulled the hood on as she walked out into the night.
Of course, it's raining…
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Isabella pushed open the door of the old brick pub and wished that Enrique had better taste. The interior was dimly lit and filled with a blue haze. It reeked of cigarettes and stale beer. Isabella held back a cough and cursed Kael medicine for removing the consequences of smoking. The room was filled with a buzz of drunk conversation, and a TV somewhere deeper inside was blaring a late-night sports show. She felt crunches beneath her feet as she ventured deeper inside the pub; the floor was littered with peanut shells. The wood-paneled walls were barely visible beneath hundreds of photographs of British soldiers from the Zulu War to the Kaelithi invasion. The rest was decorated with sports memorabilia. It was a curious sight; in one spot, a signed football jersey was haphazardly hung next to a faded German naval ensign. There was a 400-year-old musket mounted above the strange pair and a picture of a Cold War tank crew beside their centurion below. The bar was empty save for Enrique and the barkeep.
The barkeep was a portly and gnarled old man with skin so red it appeared steamed; he was wearing a dirty white tank top with a brown apron that had seen better days. He was pouring Enrique another shot of tequila with sausage-like fingers. His bright red and hairy arms were contrasted with the blue of fading tattoos. Without looking up at Isabella, the barkeep asked in a hearty voice that carried over the drunken racket, "What can I do you for, love?"
Isabella pulled out the stool beside Enrique and asked, "Do you have any Peroni?"
The barkeep looked up and laughed. "I don't carry none of that foreign shite. We have Newcastle, Stella, Guinness, Carling, and me own brew o' stout."
These barbarians and the piss they call beer. Half of those were foreign anyways…
She sighed, "Dealers choice."
The red-faced barkeep beamed at her with crooked and stained teeth as he grabbed a filthy-looking pint glass and cheerfully proclaimed, "Stout it is!" He wiped the glass with a disgusting rag draped over his shoulder. Isabella gulped. It almost certainly left the glass dirtier than it was before. Isabella visibly shuddered as he filled the glass to the brim with a vile brew so brown it was closer to black. He slapped a circular piece of hardened leather down on the bar in front of her and sat the glass atop it with a thunk, spilling a little on Isabella's sleeve.
"Enjoy."
She took a sip of the vile drink in front of her, expecting to gag.
Her brows raised in surprise. Hmmph… That's actually good. She turned to Enrique and said, "How are you feeling?"
He looked at her, paused momentarily, and then gloomily mumbled, "I'm okay, I guess…" He clearly was not okay. Enrique was a wreck. His eyes were rimmed with red, and there were bits of bar peanuts in his regularly immaculate curly black beard. He was already drunk enough to lack coordination in his prosthetic limbs. Enrique had lost both his legs above the knee, his left arm at the shoulder, and his right arm at the elbow in the war.
Isabella grabbed Enrique's shoulder and said, "I'm sorry. I know how much he meant to you."
The barkeep subtly leaned in, pretending to clean a glass.
Enrique sighed and gulped down his shot. Isabella set down her beer. "What happened?"
"He shot himself. Didn't leave a note."
"I'm so sorry."
Enrique put his head in his hands. "I should have done something…"
The barkeep interjected. "Don't think like that. Everyone has to make a choice to live, and it's nobody else but theirs to make. I've had a few old comrades take the easy way out. All you can do is pour one out for em' and celebrate their life."
Enrique peered through the bottom of his empty glass and hesitantly said, "I guess so."
The barkeep pulled an old bottle of whiskey from the wall and started filling glasses.
The corpulent barkeep interrupted the argument over a controversial call the rest of the patrons were having by shouting, "OI! C'MERE YOU BASTARDS! A ROUND ON THE HOUSE FOR A FALLEN COMRADE!"
The twenty or so other occupants let out a restrained cheer and stumbled over to the bar to get their drinks. After everyone had a glass in hand, the barkeep handed Enrique a second glass and said, "Give us a toast."
Enrique stood up and raised the glasses high. "Mike Anderson!"
"Mike Anderson!"
Enrique downed one glass while he dumped the other on the floor. A song began playing. The regulars sang along.
"As I walked by the dockside one evening so fair,
To view the salt waters and take in the salt air,
I heard an old fisherman singing a song,
Oh, take me away boys me time is not long,
Wrap me up in me oilskin and jumper,
No more on the docks I'll be seen,
Just tell me old shipmates, I'm taking a trip mates,
And I'll see you all on Fiddlers Green.
Now Fiddlers Green is a place I've heard tell,
where the fisherman go, if they don't go to hell…"
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Dreki and Mike were in the gym that had been haphazardly thrown together in an empty corner of the cargo hold.
Mike stood inside the human power rack with a loaded barbell on his back. He had 250kg on the bar, although he was really only lifting 200kg due to the ship using Kael gravity. Dreki was spotting him.
Dreki shouted, "COME ON! ONE MORE."
Mike took a deep breath and then another. He was seeing stars and on the verge of puking.
Fuck it.
Mike braced his core and went down again for his eighth rep. His hamstrings mashed into his calves in the bottom position, and after a second's pause, he slowly went back up. His face turned beet red, and veins bulged out of his neck. Spit flew from Mike's mouth as he screamed in exertion.
“GUUUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH”
Mike grinded his way up. He took two painfully slow steps forward and reracked the weight. Mike fell to his knees, gasping for air and lightheaded.
Dreki leaned down and slapped him on the back. "Holy shit, dude, that was crazy!"
Mike wobbled a little as he stood up. "What's next?"
Dreki gave him a maniacal grin as he said, "Bench."
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After most of the regulars had returned to the places they occupied before, a slim old man with a pencil mustache wearing a tan trench coat strode up to the bar. He called to the barkeep, who was bent down beneath the bar. "Oi! The usual." The barmen stood up, mumbling. He slid an ashtray to the slim old man and said, "Wait a bloody minute, Fletch, I'm changing a barrel." The thin old man lit a cigarette using an antique zippo lighter and puffed away while he waited for the barkeep to finish his task. A little while later, the barkeep stood up again and poured the old man a glass of whiskey.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The slim old man leaned against the bar, sipped his whiskey, and set his cigarette down on the edge of an ashtray. He stuck out his hand and, in a well-disguised cockney accent, said, "I'm Tim, although me mates call me Fletch, short for me last name, Fletcher." Enrique clumsily shook his hand, gave him a small smile, and tried his hand at a joke. "Enrique Martinez, my mother calls me pendejo, but I prefer it if you didn't."
The old man took another puff of his cigarette and asked, "What was your mate like?"
Isabella smiled as Enrique began telling a story.
This is just what he needs.
"Mike was the bravest motherfucker I've ever met." He laughed as he said, "This fucking guy… He asked for volunteers to charge the seals with knives, fire axes, and sharpened e-tools. That crazy bastard went first with a sword that he nicked somewhere." Enrique paused, and his eyes grew distant. "Half of us bought it en route." Enrique's mouth twisted into a malevolent grimace. "But when we got there, we slaughtered the bastards. We were covered head to toe in blue blood."
He flexed his robotic fingers. Enrique could still feel the jolt of his E-tool as it cleaved into flesh.
"Mike was like a fucking war god of old. Seeing him fight was the most terrifying yet beautiful thing I've ever seen. We carved and bashed our way through their ranks like an avalanche. They broke and ran after just a few minutes of hand-to-hand, but we didn't let up; we killed hundreds and hundreds. We would have killed them all, but they wised up and blew us to hell from orbit." He waved his hand over himself, "That's how I ended up like this, at any rate."
Tim shook his head in awe. "Bloody hell… I'd heard rumors that a couple of Yanks won an honest fight with the bastards, but I thought it was just a bleeding myth."
An even gloomier look settled over Enrique's face. "We didn't win, and we paid for the fleeting moment of triumph in blood. I got hit by the first salvo. I thought it was dead at first. I was lying face down in the middle of the road atop a pile of bodies, in total shock. I don't even know how I was conscious. I somehow managed to turn over and watched as the attack fell apart."
Isabella's mouth hung agape. Enrique had never explained exactly how he lost his limbs before.
"The fight had passed over me, and for a moment, I thought it was going to keep going, but after the second salvo, we routed."
Enrique finished his drink. "I watched as our guys ran past me. I screamed for help, but nobody did until Mike."
Enrique chuckled slightly. "The crazy bastard would have kept fighting all by himself if Roberts hadn't started dragging him back by the ear. Once he was turned, though, he made a beeline for me and hauled me out of there. We almost made it, we were only about twenty feet from the tunnels when we got caught in the edge of a blast. I saw a flash of light and then woke up in a Kael field hospital two days later. It was actually a stroke of luck. All our medics could have done for me was ease my way out."
Isabella quietly asked, "What happened to Mike?"
"I thought he was dead until we met in Lafayette as prisoners. He made it back into the tunnels with a few burns and somehow managed to hold everything together until the coalition surrendered a week later. He finally gave in after that."
The barkeep, who had been listening in the entire time, poured Enrique another drink.
After an extended period of silence from Enrique. Isabella took another draft of her beer and looked at Tim, "I'm Isabella."
Tim took a sip of his drink and puffed his cigarette as he looked her over, noting her navy-branded jacket, "What ship were you on?"
Isabella made the sign of the cross and said, "Domenico Millelire. We sunk ourselves ramming a seal shuttle parked off the coast of Sardinia. How about you, Tim? Did you serve?"
The man in the trench coat pulled his cigarette from between his teeth and said, "In Afghanistan, Helmand province. Probably before you were born. After I got home, I joined up with the fuzz, and the fools made me chief inspector."
Enrique set down his glass. His face grew serious. "Can you do me a favor, Tim?"
Tim cocked a bushy grey eyebrow. "What kind of favor?"
"Find the bastard who gave my friend the gun and nail him to a cross."
Tim put out his cigarette and said, "I'll see what I can do. The deputy of campus police is an old friend who owes me a favor or three, but the chief is a seal, so no promises."
Enrique clanked his glass into Tim's and said, "I can drink to that."
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The captain stood in the center of the cockpit with his arms clasped behind his back. He peered out at the space station in the distance and commanded, "Full deceleration."
The pilot responded, "Aye, sir," and pushed the throttle all the way forward.
The first mate looked to the captain and said, "Incoming transmission from the station."
"Put it through."
She hit a button on her control panel, and the cockpit display was filled with the face of an elderly Kael man with carved tusks and a curled mustache. He coughed and said, "Broken Fin, dock in bay four and hold for hitching. We're behind schedule."
The captain said, "Understood. How for ECB?"
The elderly Kael apologetically answered, "I'm not sure. We had an iron freighter get a nav engine short on approach and crash into the storage area. We've spent most of the day dealing with that."
The captain said, "Got it."
The wrinkled Kael nodded and killed the transmission.
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Steam billowed out around Mike as he stepped out of the shower stall with a towel wrapped around his waist. He walked across the cold tile floor to the bench with his toiletries bag. He pulled out a razor and a can of shaving cream, walked to a sink, and paused as he stared at his angular face in the mirror. He heard whirring and scraping noises to his side. He looked and saw Dreki, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, sticking something that looked like a giant pencil sharpener on his tusks.
"What's that?"
Dreki looked at him and said, "Oh, this? It's a tusk trimmer. The army's maximum length is a half span; you can't wear a helmet with anything longer."
So that's why the crew have longer tusks…
"Makes sense."
Mike closed the industrial-sized drain and turned on the faucet, filling the sink with hot water.
"You should grow out your mustache; you will be treated like a child without one on Kael's prime."
"Good idea."
Mike lathered his face with shaving cream and started scraping the stubble from his cheeks.
Dreki set down his trimmer and said, "Nothing like some light bench and heavy squats to cure a hangover, huh?"
Mike chuckled, "Light for you, maybe. I think your second warmup set was more than the human bench press record."
Dreki smiled and said, "It's not really fair. We Kael are obviously bigger, and we actually have more muscles for the movement. Our pectorals have four heads, and we have two front deltoids. Although the same goes for legs for you humans. Our 'quads' aren't quads; we only have two muscles on the thigh and one hamstring; yours have four and two, respectively, plus your tendons store a lot more elastic energy than ours."
Mike turned his half-shaven face to Dreki and raised an eyebrow quizzically. "You seem to know a lot about this."
Dreki replied, "I was in school for exercise science before my mom enlisted me."
Mike's eyes widened. "You can get forced into the military by your parents?"
"Yeah, my mom and I don't get along much. She wants me to go into dueling like my dad, but I don't want to, so she enlisted me as punishment. After I finished high school, I broke free, changed my name, and went to college as far away as I could get." He laughed. "I lived in a shoebox apartment with no hot water, but I made it work for almost two years before she managed to track me down. I scraped just enough cash together working as a bouncer and personal trainer to pay rent. After I said no again, she signed me up for the army."
Mike awkwardly said, "That sucks. I can't imagine having a parent like that."
Dreki frowned as he took off the top of his tusk trimmer and banged it against the side of the sink, dropping tusk shavings down the drain. "It's not like that; my mom isn't awful. It's really me that's the problem. I'm hurting my family's reputation; we've been pro-duelists for five generations and champions for three. My dad was champion seven times. If I don't enter the lists, the family legacy dies."
I don't see how that's his problem…
"Did your dad want you to follow in his footsteps?"
Mike's question made Dreki frown. "I don't know. I shouldn't have brought this up. never had me practice dueling, but he brought me to the gym and taught me how to lift." Dreki sighed. "I was only ten when he died. He was probably waiting for me to get older to start, although he started training when he was six."
Mike dipped the razor in the basin of hot water. "Did he never say anything about it?"
Dreki's frown deepened. "No."
Mike shaved the last of the stubble remaining on his jaw and set down his razor on the sink. He pushed a button on the faucet and sighed as he watched the water spiral down the drain.
"Sounds to me like he wasn't going to force you into it to me."
Dreki's expression remained dour. "Maybe, maybe not. I probably shouldn't have brought that up."
Mike turned the faucet on to cold and washed the last bits of shaving cream from his face. He ran his fingers over the rough, light brown stubble that covered his upper lip. He wasn't a fan.
Dreki walked towards the door and said, "I'll go make us breakfast."
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Mike walked into the cockpit and stared in awe at what they attached to the ship. It was like a bomb rack for an airplane, but it had to be at least ten kilometers long, and it mounted 3 rows of containers, all stacked 4 high.
"What's that?" Mike asked.
The first mate piqued up and answered, "It's an external cargo bay. You see, you can haul a lot more tonnage when you aren't in atmosphere. So we attach these things onto the front of the ship in space, securely, of course. It has to hang in place during FTL acceleration and deceleration. And then we offload it in space before we land. This one is all loaded with ore from asteroid mining, so we'll drop it off at a foundry that orbits a gas giant in the Kael system."
Mike crossed his arms and said, "How much can you get to FTL?"
The first mate tugged at her mustache momentarily and said, "For normal operations with this ship, it would be 61 million tons. But maximally, it all depends on how much room you have to accelerate and decelerate and how much fuel you have. Hypothetically, if we wanted to, we could probably push a few billion tons, but we would need about three weeks of full burn to slow down and speed up, and our FTL drive only has about ten days of burn before it melts itself into slag, so we can't really do much more than maybe a hundred million tons, but if we did a hundred million we couldn't stop fast enough to meet safety standards and then we couldn't use any imperial shipping lanes."
Mike leaned against the wall and asked, "What's up with imperial shipping lanes anyways? I've heard that they are working on opening one to Earth."
"Imperial shipping lanes are basically just a swathe of space where they clear all the debris, have traffic controllers, protect ships from interdiction, plus they have all the infrastructure you need to offload pretty much anything. It's safe to go through them with your shields down, which improves fuel economy. It's not by a whole lot, around 5-10% depending on how big your ship is, but over the light years, it adds up."
Dreki shouted from the kitchen. "Mike! Breakfast!"
Mike started to turn but pivoted back, "What's your name, by the way?"
The first mate's whiskers flared. "Calty."
He pointed to himself as he walked backward. "Mike. Gotta go."
Mike turned and walked over to the kitchen. He raised an eyebrow at the strange rectangles that steamed on the ceramic platter. They were about the size of a book, resembling bread made from beef jerky crumbs. "What's this?"
"It's called Telemmican. It's a mix of dried meat, fat, crushed nuts and droughtberries. You should be able to eat it."
Mike grabbed one and took a bite. He didn't care that it burnt his mouth. He was hungry. Mike's eyes watered a little at the explosion of sour and savoryness in his mouth. It was chewy and tasted odd, like dried lamb rehydrated in cranberry sauce and butter.
"How is it?"
Mike swallowed. "It's edible." He took another bite.
I knew I should have brought hot sauce.
The captain called, "Prepare for jump."
The engines began to hum at a high pitch, and the ship started subtly vibrating.
Mike looked at the cockpit. He frantically nudged Dreki and spoke with his mouthful, spraying crumbs across the table. "Do we need to strap in?"
Dreki began to open his mouth, but before he could say anything, Mike dropped his breakfast and grabbed for the table as his stomach lurched. He watched in awe through the cockpit glass as the light streaked by and suddenly disappeared.