Two Edged Sword

2000 short story by Paul Squire

Five years after Episode IV – A New Hope

The leering look she received from the henchman was almost as repulsive as his stench, or was it an it?  The young slave-girl wasn’t too sure.  Alien species had never been of much interest to her, even in her line of work, but she didn’t need to be an expert in xenocultural habits to know what was going through the filth that whateveritwas called its mind.  A repulsive shiver ran through her as she felt the thing’s multitude of eyes linger over her hips and naked thigh, and wished for what must have been the thousandth time that her clothing was even just a little bit more substantial.

Straightening her shoulders, she put on a purposeful stride to where the chariot of her owner was parked, and with a timid half smile that showed just enough of her perfect white teeth to the blank-faced stare of the chauffeur, pressed the button that raised the rear door to the elongated vehicle.  Even the usually stoic face of Hal Hallarn’s driver cracked open as she bent down to fiddle with something on the carpeted floor of the speeder and even more of her generously cut gown fell away to reveal legs that were as long as they were smooth.  After only the briefest of seconds she withdrew from the depths of the back seat, struggling with both her clothing and the chiller unit, which kept the bottle of Duaga at the exact temperature that Hal Hallarn demanded for his most favorite of beverages.

A quick shake of her hips brought most of the folds to her skirt back into place, and she mouthed a silent thank you from between her painted lips as the chauffeur stepped over to shut the speeder’s door firmly behind her.

The smile lingered on her lips as she headed back to her master’s lounge, and she added an extra swish to her hips, knowing that the eyes of the chauffeur and henchmen followed her every move.  There was something hypnotic about the way she moved, almost glided towards the lifts that kept her admirers looking after her long after the lift doors had closed and taken her away.

Sushelyana ran a hand though her long silky hair and let loose a heartfelt sigh of relief as the lift carried her away from the VIP’s garage and her smile showed even more of her perfect teeth.  Even if the chauffeur noticed the emerald bracelet on the back seat of his master’s chariot he wouldn’t give it any thought.  Especially now that his head was filled with images of her.

She’d completed Phase One as planned.  Phase Two would start shortly.  She just hoped that Centaur could handle it.

   “Need a hand?” asked the alien in guttural basic, its words snide and condescending as it hauled the human up from where he had been bundled on the skiff’s deck.  “Here, allow me.”

A savage grip held Solum by his collar and thrust him savagely from the repulsor vehicle and into thin air.  There was barely a second for the stocky man to fumble with his senses before the ground rose up to smash into his face and send stars spinning in front of his eyes.

Thick hands, their fingers stubby and coarse made ripples in the sand as he tried to push himself upright, but his strength had been knocked out of him by his fall and he slumped back down onto the burning hot sands.

A mixture of spit and blood trickled slowly out of his open mouth, trapping the coarse grains of sand like flies on sticky paper, and his green on green eyes stared uncomprehendingly at the nightmare all around him.

There was a sudden increase in the pitch of the hum that Solum was only just becoming aware of, and then a flurry of sand flayed across his skin and into his open mouth as the skiff spun on its axis and headed back the way it’d come at full pelt.

Slowly, deliberately, he climbed to his feet and spat a goblet of mucus and blood onto the sand strewn floor and watched as the grains of sand absorbed the bloody liquid just as they were meant to.  A thousand pair of eyes were on him, and his defiant eyes stared back across the rippling haze of the arena, waiting with the patience of a condemned man.

The box that Hal Hallarn reclined in wasn’t the most prestigious of those available at the arena, but it still boasted of the wealth he’d accumulated over the past seven years as the right hand to Heggarra’s most insidious and successful crime lord.  The gangster dealt in only the most profitable commodities; slavery, prostitution, extortion and assassination.  It was work with low overheads with big credits and a simple policy for handling employee problems.  Any being working for Commebeb the Callous who stepped out of line was fired, literally, unless they’d done something that had particularly irked their master, in which case they wound up here.

The arena wasn’t exclusively for the ‘retirement’ of ex-employees, though many had bought their proverbial farm on these hot sands.  Professional pit-fighters as well as the more desperate had chanced their blood at the heart of this arena, but if ever there was a vocation for the damned, well, this was it.  Hallarn smirked at the thought.  Talk about a job for life!  In this corner of the Galactic Empire there was never a shortage of the desperate or dispossessed, and rarely a break in the nonstop entertainment that kept the bloodthirsty crowds of Heggarra screaming for more.

Still, today’s midday event offered little to a connoisseur such as Hallarn.  It was more of a public execution of one who had dared to cross Commebeb, and been foolish enough to have been captured alive.  Though more of an intermission to the day’s main action, it was in a way the purpose for Hallarn’s visit to the arena today.  It was also a poignant message to all those that would dare to oppose Commebeb, and the lesson Hallarn was sure, would be both obvious and painful.  It would also serve as an incentive to the crime lord's henchmen not to fail their master, lest they too should find themselves standing on those hot sands.

Hallarn’s soft hands clapped twice, and he gestured impatiently to his nearest slave.  The young girl with the emerald green eyes that matched her jewelry hurried over, a copy of the day’s program in her gentle hands.

   “Ah, my pretty,” he drooled, his fat hands tracing an invisible line over his slave’s bare waist, “it would be a tedious morning if it weren’t for your beauty here to lift my spirits.”  A shining smile matched Hallarn’s broad grin, and he felt his mouth widen still further as he saw the faint tinge of red on the checks of the young woman as she blushed under his stare.  The day may be dull, he thought, but he had plans to make sure that at least his night would be full of excitement.

The deep rumble of a desert horn returned Hallarn’s attention to the arena floor, and he sat up expectantly despite his prophest lack of interest in the coming fight.   The human standing stock still at the middle of arena was known to him, though he gave the matter little thought.  Indeed, he’d been the center of the man’s machinations, but he cared little.  This man, Solum, was already dead in his eyes.  No, it was the Executioner that held his fascination, and like the five thousand strong crowd, he looked on expectantly for the first sign of his arrival.

His limbs ached from where they’d been bound, and his muscles were stiff from inactivity, but Solum was as ready as he’d ever be.  His eyes had quickly grown accustom to the bright light of the arena, and though his eyes were still watering from the glare reflected off the bleached white sand, his vision hadn’t been damaged by his weeklong confinement in a murky dungeon cell.

He’d heard of Commebeb’s death rings, who hadn’t, but he was still surprised at how large it was.  The arena floor was roughly circular, carved out as it had been from a natural bowl in the desert scrubland.  Three quarters of the seating area had been chiseled out of the hillside, with only the desert-facing wall truly fabricated, and much lower than the rock-hewn facade that housed the boxes of the richest spectators.

They might have brought him here to die as entertainment, but he had no intention of just giving up and going down without a fight.  He might not have the build of a Wookie, but he could more than take care of himself.  He knew that his captors didn’t rate him, but that was just as he wanted it.  If they underestimated his ability then they’d make mistakes.  He didn’t kid himself.  Out in the desert there was no chance of escape, even if he could make it over the wall without getting shot first.  But he had other plans and they had nothing at all to do with escape.

His eyes narrowed further as he tried to spy the box in which that parasite Hallarn would be sitting, gorging his fat hide with food and drink and he felt his blood grow cold despite the heat.

But then he heard something else that turned his blood to ice.  The rhythmic hum of the vibroblade couldn’t have been more than a meter behind him, and he knew without looking exactly where his Executioner stood.

Hallarn clapped his hands in surprise.

   “Oh, but that was just superb work,” he said, a smile playing across is lips.  It seemed that Solum’s opponent had just materialized out of thin air.  One minute there was just that lowly human all alone on the desert floor, and then appearing as if he’d stepped across from another dimension, the Executioner had appeared.  Hallarn knew it was a trick of the sun’s heat, nothing more, but the look on Solum’s face was priceless. Now this, thought Hallarn, was what real entertainment was all about.

Solum hit the floor hard, sand flying up all around him, coughing hard as the rough grains scratched his throat and stung his eyes.  He rolled instinctively to his right, not seeing his opponent, but relying on pure luck, and felt the vibroblade slice deep into the arena’s floor just a hair’s breath from his face.  He knew that blade could slice his head open like an overripe grabite seed and his heart pounded as he heard the quiet hum as it sliced the air apart again.

His vision was still blurred, and the shadowy apparition that was to be his death danced on the periphery of his sight, and so Solum kept his eyes tight shut listening to that terrible hum, waiting in the eternity that were his last few seconds of life.

Sushelyana gasped in shock at the same time as Hallarn clapped his hands together again in delight.  Without the aid of the macroscreen the gangster used to watch the ‘entertainment’ she couldn’t see all the detail of the fight, but it was obvious that Solum’s time had run out.

He was on his back; arms flaying and wide open to the slice of the vibroblade.

What by the seven suns was Centaur playing at?  This wasn’t part of the plan but then another gasp resounded around the arena and the crowd were on their feet. 

The kick had been so sudden and so fast, coming as it did from out of nowhere.  The Executioner hit the arena floor hard in a shower of golden sand.  In an instant he was on his feet, rolling away from his opponent, and Solum was sure there was a look of surprise hidden behind that masked face.  Still, he didn’t give the thought more than a passing smile as he leapt forward, his face cracking open into a snarl.

The snarl turned into a blood-curdling cry as he plowed nonstop into his opponent, which sent the two men sprawling again.  Blow after blow rained down and Solum’s fists were a blur as he punched and jabbed widely.  The man below him was built as from stone, but Solum felt the satisfaction of a rib popping beneath his torrent of punches.

The crowd were on their feet, yelling and stamping their feet, and Solum felt their surprise turn to adoration, and he knew it was directed at him.  Everyone loved a winner, and that was what he was going to be just as soon as...

He didn’t see the Executioner’s hand snake out, or hear the parting of the sand, as his enemy found and gripped the vibroblade.  He just heard the sudden silence as that razor sharp blade sliced the air apart as it raced up towards his side.

That final blow never came.

   “What by the twelve pits-?” began Hallarn in horror as he stared at the bloody scene, magnified in full gory detail by his macroscreen before his wide-open eyes.  It was as if the very gods had reached up out of the sand to pluck at his fluttering heart, and he felt the empty chasm of fear open wide, deep inside his stomach.  His mouth moved wordlessly, but there was nothing further he could say.  He saw Death, and Death stared back at him.  Not at anyone else, just directly at him.

With a terrified yell, Hallarn turned from his view and his slaves and fled towards his private lift as Solum stepped over the corpse of his opponent, picking up the vibroblade in his bloodied hands, and strode purposefully towards Hal Hallarn’s box.

No one noticed Sushelyana, as she stepped into the shadows as Hal Hallarn’s slaves fled after their terrified master.

Ryath Centaur quickly shifted his aim and drew the next target into his sights.  He gently caressed the trigger of his rifle, and smiled inwardly as another of the arena’s steward’s fell to the ground.  He adjusted his posture again, lined up on the next target, and dispatched another of Commebeb’s henchmen.  Three more shots and not only was the arena rife with panic, but Solum’s path to Hal Halarn’s box had been cleared of obstacles.

Sniping had never been his forte and it felt strange to be so far removed from the action, but then, that was what he was using Solum for even though the two men had never met.  Solum, despite what his misconception might have been, was the right man in the right place and at the right time as far as Centaur was concerned. 

A quick glance back towards the arena showed the last panicked dregs of the rout he and Solum had induced.  Most of the vehicles fleeing the stadium where heading out on the old caravan's track that led back to the main settlement, though a few were heading in other directions.  Only one was heading towards him.

Sushelyana slowed the speeder bike to a halt and smiled her perfect smile as Centaur rose up from the desert floor, slinging the BP-43 sniper’s rifle across his shoulder as he did so.

   “Thought you’d left it too late,” she said by way of greeting, and then flashed that seductive smile of hers again, gently moving the tangled mess that was her long brown hair away from her face.

   “So did I,” conceded Centaur, and then shook his head slightly as he returned Sushelyana’s smile with a boyish grin of his own.  “Must have been distracted by that,” he paused making a point of staring directly into her emerald green eyes, avoiding the bare flesh that her slave-girl’s disguise flaunted brazenly.

Sushelyana’s eyes narrowed menacingly, and her voice turned even the hot desert air cool.

   “Yes?” she said.  “Distracted by?”

   “By that Executioner,” replied Centaur innocently.  “Must have fooled Solum as much as me.  Thought he had him on the ropes till I saw the flash of the blade.”  He turned his gaze back to the arena.  Most of the spectators had fled, but there were still the dark dots of figures moving about.  Without the rifle’s scope he couldn’t make out who or what.  Probably more stewards or henchmen, he thought, and then frowned suddenly.

   “Did Solum make it out of there?”

Sushelyana shrugged. 

   “Hallarn raced for his chariot, entourage in tow,” she said matter-of-fact.  “Solum was on his trail faster than a mynock on a leaking power converter, but I doubt he made it to the garage in time, if he made it there at all.

   “There were a lot of guards still around you know.”

   “That was the point,” Centaur reminded his partner.  “If we worked this out right, Hallarn should be well on his way to Commebeb’s nearest safe house.”

   “If,” stressed Sushelyana.  “I still think this is a long shot.”

   “Trust me,” smiled Centaur, heading over to where his own speeder bike had been parked out of sight of the arena.  His contract had wanted Hallarn dead or alive, and alive was too much of a risk.  Whatever his sins, the man’s paranoia had made him extremely security conscious.  A full-on assault was out of the question, and a series of sophisticated shields and point defenses on his vehicles and homes had ruled out a long ranged attack.  Out of all his options, this one was by far the most likely to succeed.  “It’ll work.”

Hallarn’s chariot sped along the rocky ground, it’s main passenger bouncing around as even the repulsors failed to smooth out all the bumps in its flight.  The shields were on, and the sensors kept sharp electronic eyes open for any weapon signature.  They didn’t know about the innocent looking emerald trinket in the vehicle’s boot, and couldn’t detect the explosives buried under the road up ahead.  Nor did they know that when the two passed within an arms length of each other...

Centaur and Sushelyana turned abruptly as the explosion momentarily competed with the searing midday sun as the brightest point in Heggarra’s clear blue sky.  The two mercenaries locked eyes for a moment, till Sushelyana lowered her gaze in supplication.  Centaur had been right, and their remote triggered mine had worked, but something other than exultation at their success burned in the ex-Imperial’s eyes.  There might have been a smile on his face, yet his eyes held a cold hunger, and she knew why.

They weren’t being paid in credits, but in information.  More names for Centaur’s hit list.  More names to be sacrificed against the murder of his brother.  More fuel to burn the fires of the hell that was her friend’s soul and she looked away.

   “Let’s go collect,” said the mercenary, his voice distant, and she watched as his bike leapt forward only to disappear in a few seconds amid the swirl of sand.  She waited a few seconds more, and then followed, as she always did.  

Two Edged Sword

2000 short story by Paul Squire

Five years after Episode IV – A New Hope

Histories – Written by Paul Squire, this story influenced by the Ridley Scott film Gladiator shows Centaur as he works his way through his list – the list containing all the names of those that Centaur would bring vengeance top for the death of his brother Torath on Durathosin in Frayed at the Edge.

Cast of Characters

Solum

Ryath Centaur

Commebeb the Callous

Hal Hallarn

Sushelyana