Smugglers’ Fallacy
(Prologue)
Over two thousand Standard years ago, the human species was forced to flee their original Homeworld when it fell to calamity. Unwillingly, they became a nomadic people that searched endlessly for a new home in each star system they passed through. But they left each disappointed, unable to find a planet that both filled their needs and was uninhabited, for they were unwilling to share space with other species.
Then, after half a dozen Standard centuries of fruitless searching, they heard tell of a planet owned by the Vianar Monarchy that might suit their needs and was not, as of yet, home to anyone.
The Vianar were one of the oldest and most powerful species in the entire Galaxy, arranged as a Monarchy. They were almost as well known for their scientific advancements and their technological marvels as they were feared for their Magic. They were not a species to be crossed. So the elected leader of the humans sought an audience with the Vianarian King for rights to settle on the unblemished planet. In short, after many failed treaties and many failed uprisings, both sides eventually left the mediations tentatively content, but not ecstatic - the sign of successful negotiations.
From that day onward, the humans settled on the borrowed planet, Alrina. They tilled the land, drank the water, hunted the game, began to trade with other species in the surrounding star systems, and, little by little, built a way of life for themselves. They were allowed to govern how they saw fit, and they were allowed to keep all aspects of their cultures.
But they did not own the land they stood on.
Alrina remained a property of the Vianarian Monarchy, and the humans of the Alrianan Republic paid rent and taxes for their right to stay upon it. The price was more than fair, and the terms of the treaties drawn between their people were more than generous in many ways, favoring the humans. For two Standard millennia, those agreements held strong and a tentative peace stood between the Alrinan Republic and the Vianarian Monarchy.
That is, until six-hundred Standard years ago, when the humans decided to take their independence and launched a violent sneak attack, intent on claiming victory quickly and decisively. But the Vianar would not simply give away Alrina without a fight. And a fight they gave, catapulting a small insurrection into a full-blown war. A war that spilled first throughout one star system, then another, then several more, and then across the entirety of the Galaxy.
Six standard centuries it has raged, enveloping all it has touched. Entire planets have been swallowed by it, whole harvests have been destroyed, people laid destitute. The Galaxy itself is screaming, unable to continue standing in its wake for much longer.
But there may be hope. For there are whispers that the Barrier around Vianara, which has protected it from outside attack for all of written history, might be about to fall…
Smoke laid heavily over everything, obscuring Kayden’s vision to where he couldn’t see beyond two microblips ahead of him, or about double his own height. There was a shrill scream to his right, close enough to set the hair on the back of his neck on end. Kayden hesitated, not sure which faction the person in apparent agony was from. He only had two healing tabs left. The last thing he needed was an injured enemy hitting him over the head with a rock for them, as had happened to Rex a couple of days prior. But at the same time, if Kayden found out later that someone in his squadron had been left alone to die and he’d been only a dozen microblips away, he’d never forgive himself.
Before he could make a decision, a large blast upheaved the ground on the left. Kayden wasn’t sure if it was one of their own landmines that had been mapped incorrectly, or if it was an earth spell from the Vianarian Monarchy. He supposed it didn’t matter as the effects were practically the same. Kayden stumbled as the dirt under one of his feet shifted downwards and under the other. He only just managed to adjust most of his weight to his left haunch and stay mostly upright.
Several people who’d been closer to the commotion were blown straight up in the air or outwards with bone crushing force. One landed heavily on their side right in front of Kayden. If he squinted through the dust, he could faintly make out the wings of the emblematic barunu emblazoned on the chestplate of the soldier’s armor. So they were undoubtedly Vianarian. Visibility was so low that Kayden couldn’t tell if the soldier’s uniform was the dark green he knew it to be or the bright blue of the Republic’s garb. Everything had become varying shades of gray.
The soldier slowly tried to turn over onto their back, letting out a groan that was barely audible over the sounds of battle surrounding the two of them. When they caught sight of Kayden, however, they froze. For a second, the two stared at each other, heedless of the battle happening all around them. Kayden took in many things, realizing that the face looking up at him in abject fear was far too young, and the body far too small for the armor it was in.
There had been grim rumors that the Monarchy had become so desperate in their war efforts that they’d lowered the legal age for entering their defensive force, but this was the first moment Kayden had actually seen evidence of them. Distantly, he wondered if this...this child-- this boy -- was given armor that didn’t fit because the planet simply had nothing else to spare. Or, perhaps the young boy was wearing the armor of a dead parent.
Kayden considered what to do for a long moment. He’d lost his blast rifle at the very beginning of the battle when a stray fire spell slammed into the side of their airship hard enough to ground it. Kayden had been at the rail as a spotter on the opposite side and was tossed from the rolling deck. He was lucky enough to land in a deep lake that he’d been able to scramble his way out of. But by the time he’d made it to the shore, he’d had to ditch the heavy bag of equipment he’d had on his back so that he wouldn’t sink.
Kayden hadn’t been the only one by far. He and his fellow Alrinan soldiers had been left with virtually no cover, having to make a mad dash across a barren field to the nearest rocky overhang while under heavy enemy fire. All of them had been dripping wet, short on supplies, and hovering on the edge of panic. The entire Standard hour had been a tumultuous mess that claimed far too many lives and left none unscathed. As a result, on top of losing his blast rifle, Kayden was also out of ammo for both his handgun and his secondary rifle. At this range, his two remaining grenades would do him more harm than good, so he was left with only his emergency combat knife.
His hand was already unconsciously reaching for it, but he kept an eye on the soldier before him, waiting. The boy hadn’t moved once he’d seen Kayden, instead laying there and breathing heavily in the thick air. He was completely defenseless and made no move to rectify it.
Kayden told himself to act. This was the perfect opportunity. He just had to pull his knife, take a couple of steps forward, and slide it into the boy’s throat. He could even make it quick and mostly painless.
But, he still couldn’t move.
Kayden couldn’t tell what color the boy’s eyes were, and his hair was hidden by the standard finned helmet that all Monarchy soldiers wore. It was big enough on the boy’s head that it was slipping down his nose. His actual age was a mystery, wrapped in his oversized armor as he was.
But Kayden could see the roundness of the boy’s face where he hadn’t yet lost all of his baby fat. Although his skin had the eerie paleness of most Vianarians, far too white to be anything but alien, it seemed several shades darker than normal covered in the dirt and grime of battle. The remaining difference was all too easy to explain away as the result of blood loss. Out here, among death and pain in all directions, the boy could be mistaken for human. As if the situation wasn’t bad enough, there was a noticeable, unsubtle tremor in the boy’s chin as his gaze stayed locked with Kayden’s and his hands stayed splayed at his sides, away from any weapon or defense.
Kayden supposed that the boy might be a Mage and could rustle up a quick wind spell as a last resort. But the two of them were so close to each other that the boy wouldn’t have sufficient time to charge it fully. Even if, by some miracle, he did, he himself would be caught up in it as well.
Kayden had done many things during the war that he wasn’t proud of, but murdering an unarmed, defenseless child was not one of them. And, as far as he was concerned, it would be just that-- murder. But, he couldn’t leave the boy here to rejoin the Monarchy’s forces later, and the Republic had no resources or infrastructure on their ships to hold prisoners. All of Kayden’s training was very clear on what he was expected to do, yet just the thought left a heavy feeling in his chest.
His fingers met the handle of his knife and he gripped it firmly, more for the imagined support it granted him than any want of use. He could clearly see a line of tension that was settled in the boy’s shoulders, and the clench of his jaw as his gaze shifted and settled on Kayden’s hip where the weapon sat. Still, the boy did nothing. He didn’t start a spell or try to run away. He just...sat there in the dirt and waited. Watching.
Kayden’s mind raced for only a couple of Standard seconds before it was rudely interrupted by the sound of gunfire far too close. There was no actual moment where he made a decision. His breath didn’t grow tight, nor did his pulse pound. It was purely an instinctual action when he dropped to the soft ground and his arms quickly covered his head. Everything was a simple, trained response.
He waited for the shots to stop and remained still, even going so far as to take a deep, dirt-filled breath, holding it in his burning lungs. Unable to reach his combat knife where it was pinned under him, Kayden remained as still as he could for several more heartbeats, hoping that if he were the target, the enemy would have given him up for dead by then. He didn’t hear any footsteps near him, but that didn’t mean anything.
Slowly, carefully, he lifted his face from where he’d planted it in the ground and looked up. The Vianarian soldier was still on his back with his too-young face turned to look directly at Kayden, but there was a new trail of blood running into the ground that would surely become a small stream before long.
From his position on the ground, it looked to Kayden like a bullet had gone through the boy’s throat from one side to the other. Obviously a mortal wound, but it would probably take the Vianarian soldier several painful Standard minutes to bleed out. Kayden’s heart jumped strangely as he saw the boy’s chest rise and fall with a harsh stutter as dark blue blood welled up from between his lips.
Realistically, the color difference should have shattered any lingering illusion from before that the boy was anything like a human. But Kayden found himself transfixed regardless with his own chest seizing in memory. Another time with another victim choking right before him on their own blood filtered into Kayden’s fragmented mind, numbing him to everything else. He hardly noticed the other Alrinan soldier approaching from several paces behind, gun still held up and smoking as they trained it on the Vianarian soldier lying prone on the ground.
“Kay!” the man called. The voice was familiar, but Kayden couldn’t place it against the ambient sounds coming from every direction. “Is he still alive?!”
Kayden didn’t answer, stuck watching as the boy in front of him struggled to breathe. There was a small jerk through the Vianarian’s chest as he finally turned away from Kayden and looked to the sky. He coughed, struggling against his blood with blue spouting up through his teeth. After watching for far too longs, Kayden realized that the boy was going to drown. That thought was what gave him the strength to finally move. He forced pressure to his limbs and pushed himself up to crawl the few micro-blips he needed to come up next to the Vianarian’s prone form.
“Get out of the way, Kay! I’ll get him, but I don’t want to hit you!”
Gerza, Kayden realized. His unexpected savior was Gerza. The deep, blood-red haired man who slept in the bunk below him and always rolled one of his socks halfway down his calf for good luck.
Kayden ignored the words as he came up alongside the Vianarian soldier. The boy was now gurgling weakly, the sound bubbling up from his throat. Gently, Kayden reached out and grabbed a too-small shoulder, turning him onto his side. A small trail of dark blue blood drooled out of the corner of his mouth towards the ground with a harsh wheeze.
Kayden swallowed, realizing that his actions wouldn’t matter. Now that he was closer, he could see other wounds through the dust dancing in the air around them, including a small hole in the boy’s chest plate. The rattle in his thin rib cage was unmistakable. Another bullet had pierced the lung. Even a healing tab wouldn’t be enough to stave off the inevitable.
“Kay!” Gerza was right next to them now and he fell to his knees an arm’s length away. The man spared a glance for the young soldier he’d shot, a dark grimace across his tanned face, but he quickly turned his attention back to his fellow Alrinan instead, ducking close so Kayden could hear him over the sounds of battle. Gerza’s voice was steady and sure, much calmer than his tense body would hint. “We have to get out of here. The Commander called in the order a few Standard minutes ago. This entire area is about to be bombarded.”
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Odd, that Kayden hadn’t heard that notice. He’d known that his radio had been damaged from the initial fall, tumble, and swim from their airship. In the following firefight, all of the commands had come through garbled and staticky at best. Kayden had made do by listening for keywords and following his fellow soldiers. He’d had a rougher go of it once he and his comrades had become more sparsely spaced out. But so far as he knew, he hadn’t outright missed any important announcements until now.
Had he been too distracted by the Vianarian boy?
A good Alrinan soldier would feel something like shame at the thought. A good Alrinan soldier would snap to attention, finish the boy, be done with it, and move on without question. They wouldn’t think about it any further. Kayden, however, found himself frozen with an uncomfortable lump growing in his throat.
He should move. He knew he should. He should leave and let the land be razed again, as it surely had been countless times before. He could tell, just by how loose all of the dirt under him was, by how easily he sank into it with each step of his feet. But...
Now that Kayden was close, he took note of things he hadn’t been able to make out before. A rather sharp shock ran through him as he realized that there was the slightest curve in the chest plate indicative of a female’s armor, far more slight than it would be on a human’s, but definitely present. Not a male’s vestments, as Kayden had previously thought, but a female’s.
The young Vianarian was a girl.
That knowledge didn’t actually change anything about the current situation, but the dark memory from earlier clawed more insistently at the edge of Kayden’s focus.
He pushed it away, trying not to sink into it, and attempted to pay complete attention to the young soldier currently dying right in front of him instead. The girl’s eyes were bright, vibrant green. Unusual for a Vianarian. A few blonde bangs as bright as the color of fresh-spun stiess grass had fallen free of her finned helmet. Light purple freckles danced across the bridge of her small nose, darkening as her blood flowed out. Her skin was so pale now that it was taking on a stark white tint.
The girl was staring up at Kayden again, brow furrowed even though her eyes were wide. Her mouth was open and Kayden could hear the hitch in her breath. It sounded like she couldn’t get anywhere near enough air to live on into her lungs, but just enough to painfully keep her alive for the time being.
Gerza’s hand tugged insistently where his fingers were still rooted to Kayden’s shoulder, pulling him to the side. “Come on, Kay. We’ve got to go!”
Kayden wanted to tell Gerza to run, but he knew that the other man wouldn’t leave him. Not after Gerza’s assigned battle partner had been incinerated by a powerful fire spell right in front of him earlier that same Standard week. If he didn’t move soon, Kayden would be making the decision for both of them to die there, in that dusty valley. He knew it as well as he knew his circuit boards.
And yet, those green eyes were already haunting him. Tears welled up in the Vianarian soldier’s eyes, visible as they fell to the corners of her lids. Her breaths were small, hissing things that sounded agonizing.
Without thinking, Kayden’s hand fell to his knife handle again and he found his answer. Maybe there was some measure of peace there with it. His pulse was still steady, but it felt almost heavy as he opened his mouth. “Do you want me to make it quick for you?”
He tried to keep his voice soft so as not to scare her. It wasn’t hard; the lump in his throat had grown as hard as a rock and it was difficult to speak around. He almost expected Gerza to say something, to complain. But the other Alrinan remained quiet. His hand was still sitting on Kayden’s shoulder as a brand of warmth, even through the thick fabric of his uniform.
The Vianarian soldier didn’t seem to understand what he was saying. Most of her species spoke the Standard language, so Kayden found himself wondering if perhaps the blast from before had deafened her. She had been far closer to the epicenter than he’d been, after all. Kayden kept their eyes trained together as he unsheathed his knife and pulled it up. The soldier’s eyes flashed to it and then went back to his face, her fear overflowing.
Kayden drew his blade up to his own throat and pulled it straight across a centimeter from the skin, tracing the top of it where his throat met with the bottom of his chin and making sure to pull it far enough to illustrate going over his jugular. He then pointed to the soldier’s throat with his other hand as he finished doing so.
She seemed to understand. There was an awkward moment as her jaw trembled uncontrollably and she bit her bottom lip hard enough to make it bleed. After the heavy pause, she gave a short, sharp nod and a single tear from each eye trailed down her face. Kayden nodded and reached out, placing one hand on her shoulder in something like solidarity in a mirror to Gerza’s palm still resting warmly on his own.
It was with an odd sort of detachedness that Kayden reached forward with the knife. The lump was still in his throat, but he hardly noticed it; almost like it was someone else about to commit the act and Kayden was simply a voyeur.
So, he made sure to watch closely as he slit her throat, committing the act to memory. In return, the Vianarian kept looking straight into his eyes. Kayden wondered if she found something there that he didn’t know about or had forgotten. A rather big part of him hoped that the girl found comfort, as selfish as the thought was. Dark blue covered his blade instantly with how deep he pressed it in. He wasn’t sure whether it was the blood loss or the lack of air that was the finishing factor, but the Vianarian soldier had gone mostly still by the time he finished with only little twitches running through her body.
Kayden jumped, pulled from the odd trance he’d fallen into as a hand passed into his sight. Gerza reached forward and gently slid his hand over the girl’s face, closing her now-dull green eyes without a word. The two Alrinan soldiers sat there for another few Standard seconds before Gerza tugged at Kayden’s arm.
“I’m sorry, but we’re out of time. We’ve got to go now.”
Kayden let himself follow along, standing on numb legs and stumbling on the soft, uneven dirt. He didn’t look back, but he felt those green eyes still digging into him from behind. It didn’t matter that he knew they were closed. Gerza was talking into his radio beside him, but Kayden couldn’t make out the words past the staticky response coming back through his own, and the sound of a particularly powerful lightning spell flying through the air nearby, thunder crackling in its wake.
They both bent over, staying low to the ground as they attempted to sprint across the battlefield. It was difficult. This particular stretch of land had been used in many fights throughout the entirety of the war, bombed and razed thoroughly more times than anyone cared to count. What had once been lush farmland was now infertile dirt that was so thinly grained and loosely packed that its texture was closer to sand than the soil it had once been. With every step, Kayden sank several inches with no solid support. Just as had happened to him earlier, when a bomb or spell landed anywhere nearby, the entire ground shifted at different rates under each foot and easily destabilized even the most experienced of soldiers.
Bodies were all around them, both dead and dying. Some were in the dark green of the Monarchy and others in the bright blue of the Republic, all jumbled together. Some were grappling with each other hand to hand, but most were lying in the dust, staring unblinkingly around them as they gripped at various injuries.
Kayden and Gerza tried to weave through them, their efforts probably bearing more resemblance to a drunken dance than any sort of military charge with the environmental challenges. To his credit, Gerza called out, “Bombardment incoming! Take cover!” every time they passed a fellow Alrinan soldier.
Technically, he wasn’t supposed to do so where the enemies could hear him as well, but Kayden doubted anyone would fault him. It was probably nothing more than an effort to ease his own guilty conscience. All of the soldiers they passed were already too gravely injured to survive this battle. Otherwise, Gerza and Kayden would stop and try to help some of their comrades, their own safety forgotten. Judging by how none of them even responded in the least to Gerza’s call, they all knew it.
The few who were still wrestling with soldiers from the other side knew just as well that each was fighting a losing battle. It was just that neither wanted to die first, unable to stop even in the end.
Kayden had just a few Standard seconds to think about the futility of that, which was nothing new. It was something he saw in every ground assault battle, but it never failed to turn his stomach. Just as he started to think that he would never waste the last few moments of his life in the same manner, he saw a bright flash of color out of the corner of his eye, stealing away his attention. Something fell to the right, landing silently to the ground.
Kayden quickly turned his head to see a sonic grenade, easily recognizable by its bright red color, several microblips away. Or the equivalent to the average height of a few human men. At the sight, Kayden’s heart immediately pounded with desperation as he realized that he and Gerza were entirely too close to it.
Once again, he acted entirely on instinct and by rote. He hadn’t even made the conscious decision to do so before he was grabbing Gerza roughly and turning them so he was between his comrade and the grenade. It was hard to get any sort of push off of the soft ground, but Kayden bent his knees, planted his feet as solidly as he could, and propelled them away from the explosive with as much force as he could muster.
At the same moment he heard the telltale blast behind them, he brought his hands up and clapped them around Gerza’s ears solidly, praying he’d done so in time. By some miracle of the Forty-Four Stars, they got far enough that the physical burst itself didn’t hit them, but the sonic shockwave that followed was enough to knock them forward several more microblips.
The sound was unlike anything Kayden had ever heard. Almost like a pop, but with far too much weight behind it. His ears screamed so loudly he felt they would never stop and his brain seemed to shrink away. If he could, he would have curled up into a ball and shrieked as loud as he could just to try and drown it out, but he was fairly certain he couldn’t move even if he tried.
And then, almost as soon as it started, it stopped, replaced by a silence that was deafening in its own right and frightening in its girth.
Kayden landed half on top of Gerza, the man’s backpack suddenly knocking the breath out of his chest as effectively as any water spell. His head smacked into the ground sharply and a ringing spread through it, settling in his left ear. Within a Standard second, he felt like his brain had skipped back to the forefront and was swelling too much for his skull.
Dimly, Kayden breathed, trying to adjust. There was still a looming silence on the right side of his head, but the left side blazed with pain as he blinked. Gingerly, he pressed two fingers to the vein at his temple, trying to ease the ache. They felt oddly numb, though, with a new tingling all through his shoulder and down his arm as he shifted it. His legs were completely dead when he tried to move them, but there was no panic at his loss of mobility.
For the moment, everything felt secondary to the ringing in his left ear and gaping silence in his right. Somehow, those two things seemed far more terrifying than anything else.
Gerza rolled out from under him, pushed himself to his knees, and turned to face Kayden. A curse bit through his lips, sounding quite too far away with a strange echo, and he threw an arm around Kayden’s middle. With an almighty yank, Kayden was hauled up onto his still-dead feet and he stumbled into Gerza’s side, grabbing the edge of the man’s thick chest plate for support.
His vision swam and went murky, as though he was seeing everything through muddy rain on a dash window, and Kayden was certain he couldn’t stand on his own. His thighs had the same strange tingling feeling as his shoulder and he couldn’t feel anything below his knees. Still, panic was slow to come. More concerning was the ringing in his left ear, which was starting to waver between two different off-key pitches.
Kayden winced against the sound and tried to ignore the still-yawning silence on the right side, instead looking around as best he could. He blinked several times, but his vision didn’t clear. “Is the dust thicker over here?” he mumbled, trying not to notice as his words echoed dully through his head. Or perhaps as though his head were encased in a bubble.
“No. It was just as bad back there. But I think you’re really messed up, Kay.” Gerza’s arm shifted to wrap around his back and his other hand grabbed Kayden’s wrist, pulling it around his shoulders.
Kayden shook his head, trying to clear the fog and only succeeding in causing his brain to pound slightly in reprisal. The ringing grew louder and slightly more shrill. The silence almost felt like it was laughing. “S-something’s wrong,” he bit out as his vision started blurring further.
Gerza took a step forward, guiding him, and Kayden tried to match the other man’s movement. But he still couldn’t feel his legs aside from the tingling in his thighs. Combined with the overly soft texture of the dirt, as well his head not giving him any sort of balance, Kayden found himself unable to adapt to his new circumstances quickly enough and stumbled heavily into Gerza’s side.
“No kidding,” Gerza pulled him up, taking almost all of his weight before risking another step. Kayden managed to stay on his feet, but had to focus entirely too hard on each tiny shuffle they took forward. Gerza kindly let him concentrate on moving for almost a full Standard minute before he spoke again. “You smacked your head pretty hard for sure, but your ears are also bleeding. That blast must have done something. I didn’t get a look at it, but judging by how you covered my ears, I’m guessing it was one of our sonic grenades. Your eardrums have probably burst, and those things can really mess with someone’s central nervous system too.”
Kayden heard the words, but there was a sharp resulting throb and echo at each syllable that made it hard to understand them. He was getting both frustrated and very concerned with how difficult it was to put one foot in front of the other without stumbling. His left ear was ringing so badly, he swore he could feel the bleeding Gerza had mentioned deep in the canal. His right ear almost ached with the silence.
“Am I dying?” he asked, blinking and seeing green eyes staring back at him from inside of his lids, dancing between the grains of muddy rain.
“Not yet, you aren’t. But you will be if we don’t make it another eight-hundred micro-blips or so in the next six Standard minutes.”
They continued on, or at least tried to. Kayden felt increasingly dizzy with every step he took. The area was slightly windier than the one they’d just left, so the dirt had settled into little hills and eddies that sloped up and down. Kayden’s feet kept slipping in the silt and he became more and more dependent on Gerza’s sturdy presence at his side.
Eventually, though, even Gerza’s patience ran out and he grunted as he turned to Kayden, letting the arm fall from his shoulder. “I’m sorry about this, Kay, but we’re moving way too slowly.”
Before Kayden could even begin to form a response, Gerza ducked over and grabbed Kayden around his waist, hauling him up and onto his shoulder. Kayden’s stomach protested the action, and his head pounded as he was turned upside down. The ringing in his left ear grew ever louder and warbled between its two disjointed pitches. The silence in the right ear seemed to expand, as though it were about to swallow him. Gerza started to quickly jog and each step he took felt like a knife being stabbed straight through Kayden’s eardrums and into his brain.
The shoulder digging up into his stomach made it much harder than usual to breathe and Kayden quickly found himself completely lightheaded and disoriented. Even if he were set back on his own feet, he would have lost all sense of direction.
What was left of his murky vision blurred further as his head pounded. Briefly, the thought that he owed Gerza one fluttered through his mind and he mentally reached out and grabbed it, holding onto it like an anchor.
It was the last thing he thought before he drifted away completely and the darkness took him. As he faded, the sounds of the battlefield finally, blessedly, went quiet. It melded with the silence of his right ear, which suddenly didn’t seem so frightening after all, leaving only the ringing behind.