Aspirant

“It is our ultimate purpose to continually evolve as a species both physically and emotionally, as change is the mechanism for growth and development, and if we fear change we stunt our own growth and with it, human evolution.”—Kat Lahr, Anatomy of Illumination

Service Elevator, In Transit to the King’s Bluff Resort

Mercuria, Planet Irkalla, Survivor’s Refuge

4452.2.24 Interstellar

One hour until sunrise and Janus felt like he was balanced on the edge of something. It was either that, or the lightheadedness from the stims and the deep, deep-seated exhaustion fighting over his body. He could feel himself shaking. The advanced suit the cult had given him was helping with that, dampening out the involuntary motions by linking to his brain through the wrist-comm interface, but that did little to reduce the feeling of significance.

Lira looked at him and said, “I don’t think we should do this.”

Janus stifled a sigh and ran a hand over the stubble on his cheek. “I thought we were past this. It’s the right thing to do.”

“I know.”

“It’s what’s best for Mercuria. Prime Dome would never… Your people would never waste assets like this who could be put to work doing the dirty dangerous jobs that the privileged—”

“Are you done?” Lira asked. “Because I’ve already agreed with you. It’s downright evil, okay? Why do you think I blame your people for the lives they wasted? Including my mother's! Prometheus Base set the planet back generations through their carelessness!”

Janus looked at Mick for support, thinking, Do you see what I have to put up with?

“I’m staying the void out of whatever this is,” Mick said. “We’ve got two pallets of filters on this service lift. Make a decision.”

“We go back,” Lira said.

“You’re not the lead aspirant,” Janus growled.

“And you’re not thinking straight!” Lira said. “This is an unnecessary risk! Where’s the guy who refused to use the software override to the airlock?”

The service lift stopped and the doors slid open.

The passageway outside was deserted, scattered with things people had dropped and pieces of a busted-up stall the vendor hadn’t been given time to collect.

Before Janus could stop her, Lira punched a button for a different floor and held the Close Doors button.

“Lira!” Janus yelled, finally fed up with his second’s complete disregard for his decisions but he needn’t have said anything.

The lift stayed where it was. “What’s going on?” Lira said, hitting the close doors button again.

“Someone’s just made a choice for us, folks,” Mick said, eyes focused and scanning for threats. “Your new decision is either to stay with this cargo and likely get attacked, or you could leave it behind for whoever cut the power to the elevator.”

“Like hell we will!” Lira said.

Janus almost laughed. Getting the Primer to give something away—especially at her risk—was like pulling teeth, but she’d face down an ambush to prevent someone from stealing from her. “Finally, we agree.”

There was a drawn-out, almost mournful whistle, and close to a dozen people stepped out of hiding. They were a motley bunch, a combination of bigger brutes and smaller, vicious specimens, preponderantly male but with three women in the mix. They wore a mixture of coveralls and less practical clothing, as well as some pieces of scrapped-together armor, and all of them wore at least one piece of cloth or painted armor that was mustard yellow.

“Pit Vipers,” Mick said with disgust.

“Now, Mickel,” one of the Vipers said. “Is that any way to treat an old friend?”

Janus’s mind raced, natural adrenaline mixing with stims. How had they known to wait for them? Had Mick betrayed them, or was this the kind of reception they gave all visitors to the Royal Bluff Resort?

“Just because I slept with your mother and your sister doesn’t make us friends, Custiss,” Mick fired back. “Just kidding. Everyone knows you don’t have a mother. It was just your sister!”

“You bastard! Just because you’re a Hunter doesn’t protect you from everything!”

“I bet your mother wishes she’d used protection, Custiss,” Mick said.

“Enough!” Custiss said, pointing his dagger at Janus, his face an ugly shade of purple. “You made a mistake.”

“Oh, yeah?” Janus asked. “What mistake is that?”

More of the thugs were retrieving weapons hidden in their pockets or stashed in the surrounding mess—pipes, knives, clubs, and other more gruesome homemade weapons.

“The mistake you made was getting involved in my business, Aspirant,” the Viper said, his voice dripping acid. “Only I sell environmentals to the Muds on this level. Me. Not Old Frey, and not you!” There was a shiver of instability in the man’s voice, like a plucked string.

Lira cleared her throat. “We can give you a cut of the—”

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“No!” the Viper shrieked. His own gang members looked at him nervously. “You think just because you’ve got a fancy education, we don’t know when someone is moving in on us? This is not a negotiation, Primer! Now, since I’m feeling charitable and I don’t want to give your pet Hunter an excuse to break the peace, and in the spirit of the Trials,” he said, recovering some of his poise, “you can get the hell out of here and leave those pallets where they are.”

“Mick?” Janus asked.

“I can’t help unless he attacks me or uses more than simple weapons,” the Hunter said.

Janus nodded. “Lira?”

“There’s a lot of them,” she said.

“I just need you to keep them off my back,” Janus said.

“That, I can do,” she growled.

In that moment, confronted with the consequences of his decision, there were a hundred ways in which Janus would have liked to be better prepared. The suits would protect them, somewhat, as long as they didn’t get pinned down and pried open like he used to do with triliths during the early shift.

“Get ’em,” the Viper leader said.

One of the bigger gang members, a square-jawed woman with a tattooed face, let out a battle cry and charged at Janus with a pair of brass knuckles. She threw a running haymaker that would have dented a wall panel.

Janus didn’t have time to think, he just acted, slipping left and throwing an open hand up into her throat. There was a sickening crackle as the suit’s kinetic assistance and the ganger’s own momentum lifted her off her feet and she slammed to the floor, clawing at her broken windpipe.

“If you get her to a doctor, she’ll live,” Mick said coolly.

“All at once, you idiots!” the Viper leader screamed.

The gang charged. Janus didn’t have time to process what had just happened. He’d acted the way Ivan had trained him. His hand tingled. The big woman was kicking and shaking on the floor. A man with a steel pipe came at him with a wild swing, and Janus caught it on the light armor plate of his forearm, counter-punching and breaking his nose. He turned his head and kicked backward, catching another gang member trying to tackle him in the chest. Again, the suit’s synthetic muscle amplified the hit, knocking the ganger back three feet, then Lira was there beside him, grabbing a knife wielder by the wrist and smashing his face with her fist like it was a hammer.

“To the left!” Mick yelled cheerfully.

Janus turned and ducked under a punishing hook, shoving the attacker aside, then put his whole weight into a body blow that landed like a sledgehammer. His intended victim, a gang member even bigger than the woman with the brass knuckles, grunted and punched back, spinning Janus around and sending him stumbling past Lira, who ran and slid into a shin kick that toppled the giant.

Janus lashed out instinctively, knocking someone down with a blow that cracked their jaw while three separate blows fell on him from the side and behind. He turned, swinging his fist in a backhand that crunched into someone’s cheek, and then he stomped on someone’s foot, dropping them to the ground screaming.

“All of you, go!” the Viper leader said, and more of the mustard-colored fighters rushed out of the nearby passages to join the fray.

Janus was losing control of the fight. For every hit he landed, he took two more, and though the suit did a lot to cushion the impacts, he was tired and there would be bruises. Lira bumped into him, driven back by a gang member with a serrated machete, and the two of them fought back-to-back. As he stepped in to take some of the strength out of a swinging mallet blow, Janus suddenly wondered if he hadn’t just gotten himself and Lira killed.

A surge of mustard yellow drove the two aspirants back against the bulkhead. Blows and strikes thudded against their suits, and strong hands wrapped around Janus’s arms, restraining him and Lira. Janus thrashed around against his captors only to take a straight punch to the mouth and he sagged, held between two Vipers.

Lira was pinned to the ground.

Custiss clapped in the sudden silence. Janus was breathing hard, but the Viper leader hadn’t even broken a sweat. Janus had broken other things, though. He saw a broken arm and a broken leg, for sure, and at least three of the Vipers he’d put down were still unconscious. One was dead. Think about that later. There were fifteen or sixteen of them left standing—Custiss had had reinforcements waiting around the corner.

“You did a lot more damage than I would have given you credit for, Aspirant,” the Viper leader said dropping his hands and making his dagger reappear, like a magic trick. “Stories about this fight are going to spread, about how I took down some do-gooder Prime Dome aspirant who thought he could muck around with the Pit Vipers. I might even get promoted for this,” he said, cackling.

“Let them go, Custiss,” Mick warned. “You don’t want the kind of trouble killing aspirants will bring you.”

“Oh, you’re right, there, Hunter. I’m just going to give them each a little cut,” he said, tapping the side of his nose. “Next time you think about nosing into other people’s business, you won’t have one to do it with.”

Janus looked up in time to see Micah, the Mudrakers’ overseer, walk up behind Custiss and grab him by the knife-holding wrist. He lifted Custiss onto his tippy toes.

“Micah? What are you—”

Micah’s fist landed with a wet slap, knocking Custiss around without letting go of his arm. The Pit Vipers shouted and cursed, rushing to help, but more Mudrakers flowed around their leader and the one-sided fight turned into a whirling melee. One of his captors punched Janus in the back of the head and he dropped to the floor, but he was otherwise abandoned in favor of the new threat, and he and Lira scooted and crawled back against the bulkhead, trying to stay out of the chaos.

“You two okay?” Mick asked, watching the fight with his arms crossed.

“Didn’t…” Janus spat a little blood from where he bit his tongue. “Didn’t really think you’d stay out of it while we fought.”

“Oh, yeah. Can’t break Hunter neutrality,” Mick said as combatants on both sides seemed to give him a half-meter bubble of space no one wanted to enter.

“We paid you to get us where we were going,” Lira growled.

Mick gave her a big grin. “Yeah, about that,” he said, pulling a thousand-credit transfer up on his comm and flicking it back to Janus. “Not allowed to get paid to be someone’s bodyguard, either.”

Janus groaned and propped himself up, back to the wall. The fight had gotten more brutal now that the two gangs were going at it, weapons breaking bones and cutting flesh, although it was decidedly in the Mudrakers’ favor. Micah was a giant in the sea of people, still holding Custiss by the arm, but then there was a loud crack and the Mudraker overseer stumbled.

“Gun!” one of the Muds shouted.

The brawlers from both sides scattered, revealing Micah, who had sunken to one knee, and Custiss, bloody-faced and furious, aiming his pistol one-handed for a finishing shot.

“Oy! Drongo!” Mick shouted.

As Custiss turned his head, Mick grabbed a fallen baton and threw it. It struck the Viper in the forehead, staggering him for just the amount of time it took Mick to sprint through the gap, grab Custiss around the waist, and slam him to the ground.

“Everybody on the ground! Now!” Trace said as she and four other Hunters moved in, insect-like and very nasty-looking rifles raised.

Mick landed a right cross on Custiss’s jaw and stood up, the pistol in hand. “Hi, Mum!”

“Mickel Mercy Traceson, you are in trouble,” Trace said. She grabbed one of the other Hunters and pointed at Micah. “See to that wound.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Trace snapped her fingers and pointed to two Vipers. “You! Get your wounded and your people out of here!”

The Viper curled his upper lip. “You can’t tell me what to—”

“Shut it!” Trace said, getting in the much larger man’s face. “Discharge of a firearm on a residential floor. Violation of the Croyt agreement. You know what that means?”

The thug swallowed. “What about Custiss?”

“He’s going to be traveling for a while. He won’t be back. You want to go with him?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good,” Trace said. “Cheer up. There’s a vacancy in a superior position. Now, get your people out of here.”

Janus looked at Lira and said, “I think we missed something.”

“I think you’re right,” Lira said.

As the Vipers cleared out, Trace caught sight of the two aspirants and grabbed a couple of Mudrakers. “Load those two onto the pallets and get it all inside the resort.”