The elevator hummed as Dallas bounced on the balls of his feet. His breath came back and forth quickly in puffed gasps through his puckered lips while his eyes darted back and forth like captured fish in tiny glass bowls. The words escaped his lips over and over again in between hurried breaths as he tried to calm his fevered heartrate and pulsing, red blood that was coursing through his head and the rest of his body. “Hello Gareth! How are you! Yes, just taking the shortsword for a little spin- just taking the old soldier for a walk in the black- just…just…just taking a walk through the…
The door started to slide open. Before him lay the office and the desk in the same pattern he’d remembered seeing since he was a little boy. Gareth sat at the desk, the hair under his Red Beret a little grayer, the lines in his lantern-jawed face a little deeper than it had been when Dallas had first walked in this room a decade and a half ago. But the large packs of muscle under the decorative shoulder pads and red cloak were still as big as ever. Dallas gulped, recalling when he’d seen Gareth cleaning and testing the large-caliber manstopper pistol that he then stored under the desk in a side-holster, conveniently accessible to Gareth and pointed directly at whomever would step out of the elevator door.
“Hey, Gareth! Good to see you! Yes, I’m authorized! Sure ! Just going to take it for a little walk in the- “Hey, Gareth! How are you?” Dallas’ voice jumped up to a regular speaking voice, maybe a shade too high. Had he smiled too wide?
Gareth looked for a moment at the twenty-year old youth before him. His eyes flicked to Dallas’ short dark hair, his widening shoulders, and the fingerless black gloves on his hands. In literally an eyeblink Gareth’s eyes had flicked to both sides of Dallas’ hips. Satisfied about…something, he finally smiled. Although his hand remained in its spot underneath the desk.
“Dallas, lad! Good to see you! It’s been a while, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been pretty busy, instruction and all.”
“What is it you’ve been studying, Dallas? I knew you’d stayed here on-world for school, but that was all.”
“Oh, this n’ that. Bit of mech-fighting, bit of engineering, military history. You know…”
“Family Business,” they both said in unison. Gareth laughed. Dallas noted the man had put on some pounds- he was a good twenty or so heavier than the last time Dallas had been up here. Of course, that had been a few years ago. Maybe more than a few, really.
“Yes, so, what brings you up here, Dallas? I heard you…ah, opted against school in the academy, but not much else.”
“Not much else, huh. Did you hear anything in particular?”
“Well,” the older man said, rearranging himself in the chair, his darned, frapping hand still in that spot under the desk. “Not much, Dallas. Not much, aside of a few- hm…conversations you’ve been having with your Pater lately.”
“Oh, well. You- ah- you know how Pater can be, right?”
“I do indeed, young Dallas. You’re aware of my history with him, are you not?”
“Um- no. No I’m not. No one told me much of anyth-”
Finally! Finally, the older man had taken his hand off of the manstopper under the desk, and was pulling at the fingers of his right glove with the fingers of his left. Now, about how to…
Gareth had now pulled off the deep red glove and exposed his right hand. It was made of dark, industrial gray metal, the kind Gareth saw in the lower quarters of the family’s planetary fortress when he had gone slumming. “You never knew about this, did you boy?” he said, the mechanical digits waving at him. “All your life you’ve lived in this place, all the times you came here to look at our protective champion. Your ancestral treasure, never once did you ever notice that one of my hands worked a tad differently from the other?”
“I- well, I, that is-” Dallas stammered as Gareth stood from the chair. Dallas began to reconsider his plans for a moment. What he thought was an overweight old warrior,basking in the glories of his past victories was now revealed to be just about anything but. Gareth's metal hand had now formed into a flexing fist, its fingers making tiny but unavoidable scraping sounds against each other as he flexed it. Gareth was also wearing the longcoat, shoulderpads, kneepads and leg armor typical of those of his station as a security guardian, the last line of defense between the family heirloom and the likes of the thief that Dallas hoped to become.
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“I,” Gareth said proudly, looking at his metal hand, emerging from behind the desk to look out the broad viewing window before him at the endless blackness of space, and the horizon of the world Dallas had always known. “I knew your father before your birth, Dallas Morgan. Because I served under him in the Wars of the Federation’s Aggression, right up ‘til the end when the Corporates invaded. Independence was our banner, and your father commanded us- Morgan’s Mustangs was the name of our unit.” Gareth stopped to lean in to the glass and breathe on it slowly. The fog covered a space the size of Gareth’s head, and he used the fingertip of the gloved hand to draw a crude picture of a long-nosed creature with upward-pointing ears.
“Uh- what’s that, Gareth?” He knew, but it was important to keep the older man talking.
“It’s a horse, Dallas. The symbol of our regiment- and one of the symbols of your house, too. A creature from Earth-Long-Ago. Once there were thousands of them, and rugged heroes rode them into battle. Into glory! You- your name, boy, came from an ancient city on earth, known for its wealth and for a people so fiercely possessive of their independence- the ‘cowboys’ they were called- that they once told a tyrant he could ‘Come and Take It’ when he ordered them to lay down their greatest weapon and surrender.”
This is almost too good to be true, Dallas thought to himself. He’d had to get through several other hurdles to get this far. But now, the last and toughest obstacle to his goals was lost in a boring war story, his memories more real to him than the young man inching towards the control panel behind the desk.
“House Morgan- another breed of ‘horse,’ incidentally,” said Gareth, still in the raptures of his monologue, “we are small, but we were feared amongst the units the Corporates threw at us, again and again! They thought they fought as one, but not like us, by the red comet’s tail! And then, when it was finally over, I’d lost my hand. In their final, desperate assault, they surprised our backup forces and appeared, hidden from our scanners. Eighty-percent losses that final day, Dallas. And I? I had to lose my arm. I was told that I would never pilot a mech again. Never, ever again…all over that Mons BlueJay, over there. Do you see it? That’s how close those little lizard-brains came to your home. Your mother, in the very process of giving birth to you in the lowest, safest levels of the fortress! I, dying in the wreckage, and your father, your dear Pater, ripped open head off of my mech with his grandfather’s sword so he could carry me back to safety, and- well, Dallas, in so many in other houses, an injured warrior who can no longer fight- he becomes something so menial. So-trite. A janitor mopping floors, or a civil servant pushing a stylus. But your father? He’d got it into his head that I had been the reason that the final assault of the Corporates had failed. And that I was the last standing, last breathing, and that- well, I was given this great honor instead, Dallas. Do you understand that?”
“I- yessir. I, I do understand that. When you act and serve with honor, you should be able to expect honor in return.”
“Good, Dallas. Good. Do you understand that this is why-”
Gareth spun around suddenly, flicking his left arm as another, smaller blaster appeared in his gloved, human hand with a soft click.
And its ugly muzzle was pointed at Dallas.
Dallas was standing over the console that Gareth had stood over every day for the last twenty years, until very, very recently.
“Gareth?” Dallas said weakly. “What- what do you plan to do with that?”
“My job,” Gareth said. “Do you know exactly what that is, young Dallas?”
“To- to guard the Galatine.”
“No, Dallas. The Galatine is far more than a simple, mid-size, ShortSword-class mech. It’s been in your family for five generations, and your pater piloted it when he defended his home from that Corporate scum who sought to absorb us. No, guarding it was the job of the others you have defeated on your way up to this, the highest tower in the Morgan family fortress, here on New Avalon. No, It was the job of the Orkney protocols on level 4 to keep you from rising above them, but you somehow managed to dance past their algorithms.”
“Well, the guard at the base of this spire overrid that. He thought I was-”
“...Then,” said Gareth, interrupting, “it was the job of the gas-blowers and the hunter-bots on levels 5 and 7, yet you somehow managed to either not breathe or not move , and evade them as well.”
“That was surprisingly easy. A few inter-vids, a few handfuls of pocket-coins with my sweat rubbed in them, and a mask with the filters soaked in my urine- boom, easy-breezy.”
“Yes, of course. But now…now you are here. And I am here. And my loyalty to your father is greater than my loyalty to you ever could be. And yet…”
Still waiting for an opening, Dallas looked expectantly at Gareth while trying to wrack his brain for a backup plan. “And yet?”
“And yet, my job is to terminate anyone who walks through that elevator door without expressed clearance from your pater. I am, in fact, supposed to shoot such a person before I even call your pater. No exceptions.
“And yet…and yet, Gareth, I live.”
“True, young Dallas. It would seem I must, despite my regrets, terminate your-”
Dallas ducked under the desk.
Gareth squeezed the trigger, and fired.
TO BE CONTINUED….