Smoke and ash filled the air, swirling through the dirty streets in gusts of hot wind as fires raged in the simple wooden houses of the village. Screams pierced the flames' vicious roars, to be silenced by gunshots like claps of thunder.
A lone figure stood in the village square, surrounded by the blazing inferno. Tears streamed down her soot-stained face, only to evaporate in the blistering heat. Around her lay countless bodies, broken, charred.
Lifeless.
Men, women. Elderly, young. All equally dead by her hands, their eyes staring up at her, empty yet full of judgment. Monster, they accused her. She heard their voices in her mind, overlapping one another in a cacophony of horrible indictments. A thunderous noise that threatened to overwhelm her until, finally, she collapsed to her knees.
She wanted to scream, to silence the accusations. She was no monster. This had not been her choice; she had been forced by another to commit these crimes. But the voices only grew louder, angrier, until all else was drowned out.
Monster.
* * *
Olivia woke with a start, bolting upright in her ship's cramped seat. She felt sweat trickle down her forehead. Vestiges of the nightmare scurried around her mind before retreating into the dark, deep crevices of her subconscious, where she was sure they would wait for their next chance to strike.
Wiping her face with her jacket's sleeve, Olivia took a deep breath to banish the vision and gazed out through the cockpit's canopy into the endless void of space as the last wisps of the Walker nebula finally relinquished the Sichel. A bright, red star hung motionlessly in the distance, and beyond it the great, white band of the Barrier. It was a beautiful sight to behold every time, often doing much to relieve the stress of whatever misadventure had brought Olivia to this region of Sirius. Not so this time, however. Faint screams still echoed in her mind, reminding her of why she had returned to Forty-Eight after all these years.
Pedro was dead, his life taken by Olivia herself. But where one head was severed, many more sprouted to take its place. While she had hoped that the man's death would lead to the prompt collapse of his criminal empire - his sole daughter far too young to inherit -, instead, his lieutenants had taken a hold of the remnants and split them between themselves, continuing the reign of crime, corruption, and terror that their former master had perpetuated.
Olivia averted her eyes from the view and glanced down at her instruments. Her nav computer was directing the ship on a straight course towards Gran Canaria, one of the few planets left unclaimed by house or other empire, and therefore a hotspot for criminal elements from across southern Sirius. A contact had given her a lead - a frighteningly expensive one - that one of Pedro's former seconds was on the planet for business. Business that Olivia was certain involved the exploitation of hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people.
But why did she care? Why had she made the long, arduous journey to this dangerous region of human space? Olivia closed her eyes. The question had been on her mind ever since the nightmares had returned and she had set her mind on taking this course. It was the same question her contact had asked her when she had hired him to locate Pedro’s lieutenants.
“Why?” The man had asked as he pocketed Olivia’s down payment. “Why do you care?”
It had been the first time Olivia had needed to put her newfound purpose into words for another to understand. And so she did.
"I have done some terrible things in my time as a merc," Olivia began. leaning back on the bench of the dusty booth in the shady bar they had chosen for their meeting. "Things I really, really regret doing. I've spent the past decade and a half fighting, killing for money. I have no idea how many lives I've snuffed out in that time - mostly working in space puts a comfortable distance between yourself and your actions like that. Just take the money and shoot whomever your boss pointed at, right? But every job I took, every battle I fought, I just hoped that the people I ended up shooting were somehow worse than the ones I was getting paid by. And you know what? I always thought I did a pretty good job of picking my employers.
"But then..." Olivia hesitated as the nightmare – the memories - of that terrible day threatened to surge once more into her consciousness. "Then I ended up with Pedro. That god damn bastard. And the fucking things he made me do..."
Olivia sighed. " Pedro was an evil son of a bitch. Truly fucking evil. He seemed like just another employer at first, but before you knew it, he had you firmly under his thumb, doing the dirtiest jobs imaginable." She swallowed hard, letting the memories of that day flood back into her mind. "I’ve told you about that day, that village on Crete. Those people. They were completely innocent. Their only crime was that they weren't willing to live under Pedro's rule. But that was something he couldn't allow. Couldn't let himself appear weak. So, he sent us - my company and me - out to deal with them. To make an example of these people. He made us slaughter them. Innocent villagers. Families. Children. Everyone.
"Pedro had shit on us. Threatened to go after our own families if we didn't obey him. So, we did what we were told. We killed them all and burned down their homes. And I told myself it wasn't my fault. I had the fucking gall to say that I was being forced to do it. That it wasn't my choice."
Olivia fell silent, gazing out over the bar as images of that fateful day flashed before her eyes. Her contact waited for her to continue, patient.
"That day broke us - the company," Olivia went on. "We scattered across Sirius, trying to get as far away from Pedro as possible. He didn't stop us. I guess he knew that we wouldn't be of any more use to him after that.
"I went on working as a merc wherever I went. That was the only thing I knew how to do, after all. I tried to pick my jobs more carefully, but they all just ... felt wrong. What sort of a life was I living, taking lives and risking my own at someone else's behest? All for a handful of credits. Every job I took, I worried I'd end up with another bastard like Pedro, who didn't give a shit about me and just wanted some dirty work done. But I kept going. Didn't know anything else.
"And then the nightmares started. The memories of what I did to those people. They haunted me every time I closed my eyes. The faces, the screams, the stench. But then I got a chance. A chance to get back at Pedro for what he did to me. What he made me do. What I did."
“You killed him,” her contact guessed.
"Yeah." Olivia closed her eyes, replaying that night on Crete when her former friends and colleagues raided Pedro's compound. When she cornered him in his daughter's room. "Yeah, I killed him. Put a slug right through his head. I thought that would put an end to it, to the nightmares. That it'd redeem me." She opened her eyes again, looking down at the empty glass on the table before her. "But here I am, still dreaming of it all. I guess redemption's too good for me.
"But fuck going on as I have. I'm not going to keep being just another killer for hire, working for whatever son of a bitch pays the most. I don't know if anything I do can ever make up for what I've already done, but I sure as hell will try to find out. There are plenty more people like Pedro out there. People like me. Evil people. I lied to myself when I said I didn't have a choice that day. I did. I could've stood up to Pedro and said no, even if that meant getting myself killed. It would've been the right thing to do. So I'm going to make that choice now. I'm going to hunt down people like that until I fucking die, and then we'll see whether I've redeemed myself."
Olivia fell silent again, looking up with sudden determination. The man across from her remained silent, letting her words sink in.
"I already killed Pedro," Olivia finally spoke again. "But he had lieutenants, and they've turned out to be just as bad as he was. I'll start with them."
The Sichel rocketed on towards Gran Canaria, drawing ever closer to where Olivia believed her first target to be. She sat in silence, glaring out at the planet now looming before her, and recalled her contact’s words after she had finished her account.
“You are right,” the man had finally said.
"I'm right?" Had been Olivia’s surprised response..
“About this. About hunting them.”
Olivia had not answered. Why would she care about a stranger’s opinion of her purpose? And yet, she had felt herself relax. Affirmation, regardless from whom, had felt ... good.
“I guess,” the man had continued, “that you will be calling on my services again in the future.”
Olivia had given him a smile in response. “Probably.”
* * *
The Sichel shot towards the planet's southern hemisphere, the nav system plotting a descent path through the atmosphere towards a small settlement nestled between mountain ranges. It was here that the information broker had assured her she would find her mark - Dareios Galanis. As clouds whisked by outside, twisted into swirls of vapor around the ship's wingtips, Olivia brought up the dossier she had put together on the man.
One of Pedro's top three lieutenants, she had often interacted with him - Pedro himself had more often than not been too good to hand out tasks to her and the other Colors himself. So, he had sent Dareios in his stead to declare his will and point out their next targets. But just as often, Dareios had used and abused the company for his own petty plots, running down competitors in the artifact business to further his boss' or his own goals.
Thirteen. That was the number of people Olivia knew for certain she had killed on the man's behalf - not counting any she had been unable to confirm. Most of them had been criminals themselves - drug lords, smugglers, pirates - or mercenaries paid to work for their kind. But some, she knew, had been innocent men and women, dragged into the mess by sheer misfortune. She had killed them all the same.
Now, years later and following the demise of his boss, Dareios was carving out a share in the artifact business for himself, using many of Pedro's resources he had been able to abscond with. He perpetuated the crime empire that Pedro had spent decades building up. Perpetuated the terror and misery. Continued to exploit innocent people merely trying to live their lives. Tore families apart. Olivia clenched her fists. The broker had been right. She was right.
A warning tone from the cockpit's console tore Olivia's attention away from the document. Outside, the clouds parted to reveal the snowy peaks of the mountain range passing by. Closing Dareios' dossier, she glanced at her contacts screen. The sensors had picked up three signatures rapidly ascending from the settlement, a few dozen kilometers ahead. The Sichel's scanners locked on to them, despite the distance - Olivia felt a pinch of pride for having spent so much on the grey market Lane Hacker tech. It quickly revealed the contacts for what they were: three Corsair ships. Two fighters, one freighter. A moment later, it revealed their transponders.
Olivia gripped her ship's flight stick tightly. The freighter was Dareios', matching the codes she had bought off the broker. She gunned it, igniting the Sichel's afterburners, and flicked off its weapons' safety.
The Sichel shook violently as it rocketed towards its targets, buffeted by the mountainous region's strong winds. Olivia didn't pay them any heed, clutching her controls tightly and waiting for her ship's targeting computer to provide her with a missile lock on Dareios' freighter. Detecting her approach, the two escorts - a pair of Titans - broke out of their formation and came about in wide arcs to face her, their heavy frames struggling to maneuver through the turbulent atmosphere.
A long, high-pitched tone rang out through the Sichel's cockpit. Olivia squeezed the trigger and a missile shot out of its launch tube atop the vessel. It streaked through the sky, leaving behind a swirling trail of vapor and exhaust fumes, closing the distance to its target in a matter of seconds. The freighter deployed countermeasures, but too late. The missile struck its aft, the ship's shields flaring as a ball of fire and shrapnel spilled across them. Then they faded, failing. The freighter dove away as its escorts closed in on the Sichel, bristling for a fight.
"Here we go," Olivia grunted, putting the Sichel into a roll to avoid a burst of incoming fire from the lead Titan. The nimble craft - its avian form lending it maneuverability in even the densest of atmospheres - easily avoided the neutron bolts. Reversing her roll, Olivia sent the ship into a loop, diving into the cloud cover below, ostensibly chasing after the larger prey. As expected, the Titans followed, chasing blindly after her.
The Sichel's afterburner roared to life, followed by a sonic boom resonating across the surrounding mountain tops. The fighter tore out of the clouds at a breakneck speed, then immediately pitched upwards, and looped back up into them before its pursuers could regain sight of it. An instant later, the TItans streaked out of the clouds, blasting the air in front of them with bolts of neutrons. Noticing their target was nowhere to be seen, they ceased fire, confused.
A small, dark canister plummeted out of the clouds above. The mine's tracking and maneuvering thrusters were rendered useless by the atmosphere's air resistance; gravity, however, provided an alternative. It fell between the two ships, flying side by side, and detonated on proximity. The powerful blast washed over the vessels, stripping away their shields, and sending them on uncontrolled plummets towards the planet's surface as what lift their stabilizers could provide dissipated.
The Sichel came screaming after them, erupting from the clouds above like a falcon diving for its prey. Olivia let loose a stream of laser bolts, tearing into one Titan, and launched a missile locked onto the other. The barrage of photon bolts shredded its mark's left stabilizer, sending it into a flat spin that it would never recover from. The other Corsair loosed a barrage of flares, narrowly avoiding the chasing missile. Recovering from its tumble, the second Titan broke off, leaving its partner behind to helplessly fall towards the ground.
Olivia gritted her teeth, letting the Corsair go, and continued her dive towards the surface, picking up as much speed as she could without tearing off her own ship's wings before pulling up, chasing after Dareios' freighter - now only a small speck on the horizon, racing towards the mountains. She watched as it crested a summit and disappeared behind the mountain's peak.
"Not getting away," the mercenary growled, and reignited her afterburners. The Sichel leapt forward, steel groaning as it struggled against the increasing air resistance. Seconds later, it shot over the peak and dove down, racing mere meters above the downwards slope on the other side. Ahead, the freighter grew larger as Olivia closed the distance. Bolts of energy streaked past the Sichel as the freighter's turrets opened up on it, peppering the mountainside and launching clouds of vaporized snow and molten rock into the air. Olivia inhaled sharply, weaving in and out of the stream of incoming fire. Her finger hovered a hair's breadth over her own trigger, waiting for the perfect shot to line up as she drew ever closer to her prey.
Suddenly, the Sichel shook violently as something struck its right wing. The scream of metal on metal resounded through the ship as the stabilizer deformed and tore off from the ship's hull. Olivia cursed as the surviving Titan shot past, its gun barrels glowing red hot. The Sichel trembled, fighting to remain airborne, Olivia struggling with the controls to keep it from crashing nose first into the mountain. She screamed, pulling the trigger and loosing a barrage of lasers and missiles at the freighter ahead, desperate to score the hits she needed to bring it down.
And she did. The freighter's barely regenerated shields flashed under the laser fire, popping like a bubble. Two missiles struck its hull, launched from too close for flares to distract them. As Olivia lost control of her ship and pulled her arms close to her body, she watched with a wry smirk as Dareios' ship lurched and fell out of the sky. Then the Sichel followed suit.
Crimson drops splattered onto the snow as a coughing fit doubled Olivia over. Squinting, she glanced up from the bloodied ground. The world around her was spinning, the daylight reflected by the snow-covered mountainside blinding to her eyes. Her ears rang, yet she could make out the roaring of flames as the Sichel transformed into a blazing inferno behind her.
Kneeling down, the snow softly crunching beneath her, Olivia cautiously ran her hands over her body. There were aches in a dozen places and touching her chest shot a lance of pain through her torso. A fractured rib most likely. Patches of her jacket and flightsuit were burned or torn, but her hands came away clean, no bleeding wounds to be found. Lucky. She knew the crash could have easily killed her.
The mercenary sat there, taking deep breaths, letting the spinning scene around her come to a gradual halt, the ringing in her ears ebb off. Slowly, she turned her head, facing downhill to where a plume of smoke rose from the ground, marking the end of a long, black scar in the otherwise pristine, white landscape. Shakily, Olivia rose to her feet once more, fighting a sudden urge to throw up. A trickle of blood ran from her tightly pressed lips, dripping down her chin onto the tattered remains of her jacket. Another deep breath calmed her nausea, though the taste of iron on her tongue remained. A problem she would have to worry about later.
But there were other, more important matters to deal with first.
Reaching down along her left thigh, she felt the reassuring handle of her combat knife still clasped firmly in its sheath. A probe of the other leg revealed that her favored handgun, too, was still tucked tightly in its holster. A glance over her shoulder at the wreckage of her ship told Olivia that the remainder of her belongings - mostly weapons - were lost. She sighed and started the slow, pain-wracked trek down the mountainside towards the growing column of smoke. The meager armament she still had on her would have to suffice to deal with whomever she met at its source.
* * *
The freighter's frame was twisted and bent, its hull scorched and in places torn wide open by the violence of the crash. Soft snow had quickly given way to solid rock along the ship's half-mile skid down the side of the mountain. Debris littered the surrounding area, dotting the landscape like stray flecks of black paint on a white canvas. Smoke billowed from the vessel's remains, orange flames licking at what remained of the hull's paint.
A man crawled out from within the wreckage on hands and feet, coughing as he gulped in fresh, cold air. Dazed, a bloody gash running down the length of his face, he looked out at the scene around him. A smile cracked his lips and he let out a laugh, exulting at his survival. Then his head snapped back, a spray of blood and grey matter spattering the snow behind him. Lifeless, his body crumbled.
Olivia limped closer to the freighter, keeping her handgun raised in case any more survivors emerged from the wreck. Judging by the damage to the vessel, there could not be many, if any at all; yet she remained cautious. Cretans were, as she had come to learn only too well over the years, tough bastards. Slowly, sweeping her gun from side to side, she approached, stepping over her victim's corpse - no one she recognized-, jagged bits of metal torn from the ship, and puddles of molten snow. The crackling of flames grew louder, punctuated by the occasional pop of small detonations - fuel cells bursting, rivets coming apart. The smoke billowing from the wreck became a dense haze, and the mercenary was forced to cover her mouth and nose with one hand, gripping her sidearm in the other.
Circling around the ship, she discovered a gash in its hull large enough for her to step through and found herself on a through-deck between the freighter's bow and cargo space. Sparks cascaded from severed electrical wiring, illuminating what was otherwise a dark, lifeless interior. Olivia stepped towards what remained of the cockpit - the ship had plowed into the ground nose first, its ornamental horns and most of its prow having been shorn clean off. Sitting in the mangled remains of the pilot's seat, she found an equally mangled body, its face an unrecognizable bloody mess. Holstering her sidearm, Olivia reached around the body, found the release for its safety straps, and pulled. Freed, the limp corpse slid out of the chair, collapsing onto the deck below. Satisfied that the pilot was indeed dead, the mercenary once more drew her weapon and returned to the freighter's main hold.
If anything, it looked worse than the cockpit. Cargo crates had come loose from their magnetic pads and transport nets, many cracked open by the force of the ship's impact. Goods were spilled all over the deck - munitions, fuel canisters, food stuffs. Amongst the mess, in the dim, red light cast by a few still functioning emergency lights and the ever thickening smoke, Olivia could make out the twisted shapes of bodies.
Cautiously, the mercenary moved through the chaos from body to body, checking to see whether she recognized any faces. She didn't. Worry struck her as she realized that her target, Dareios, may not have been aboard the ship, that her contact's information had been wrong, that this hit and the loss of her ship had been a waste. Her hand clenched around her handgun's grip, knuckles white. She rose to her feet again from where she had crouched beside the last of the corpses and glanced around the devastated cargo hold. There was no movement, save for the billowing clouds of smoke and flames slowly advancing from the ship's aftward engine compartment.
"Damn it," the mercenary muttered under her breath.
