The Duke of Painite - Part 3 - Delivery Assassin Lord
16 Dec 2019Smertkopf
For one who had attained the status of Lord and thus the middling ranks of the lower Imperial nobility, I did not feel very noble.It was not because half of the missions I was doing involved hauling water and clothes from one station to another, or even the fact that the other half of the missions involved hunting down one fellow human being after another. They were pirates, after all, and as far as I'm concerned every pirate in the galaxy can fall into a neutron star. Something else was on my mind that I could not place.
My new friend Lord Evyn Bartleby threw an obscenely ostentatious party in honor of my joining him in the Lordship.
"Simply stunning, old boy," he burbled at me happily from beneath his massive eyebrow implants, draining off a glass of Lavian brandy and pressing one into my hands at the same time. "Why, I do believe that soon I'll be having to salute you!"
Here I was, surrounded by more wealth than I'd seen in my entire life, and a member of the Imperial elite to boot, and somehow I found little joy in the occasion. One of the perks of my new title is an estate on an Imperial world, the details of which have already been arranged. I've never owned terrestrial real estate before, and I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do with it. I haven't been down a gravity well bigger than that of a large moon in half a decade...I'd probably have a miserable time of it to visit my new acquisition, but I'm stuck with the plot nonetheless. I was disturbed out of my musings by Bartleby's meaty hand gently nudging my shoulder.
"You still will us, Smartkop, old boy?"
I shook my head and visibly started a bit at my host's eyebrows, which were an abominable shade of mauve and sculpted with nano-wax into writhing spirals and curlicues.
"I'm fine, Bartleby," I managed, my head spinning in the exotic odors emanating from every corner of the hall wherein the party was being held; everything in the place seemed to stink of perfume, incense, or lavender water---the host most of all. Evyn's not a bad fellow, but he's still an entitled, spoiled fop of whom a little goes a long way, and so I politely excused myself and fled from the compound and out into Langley Terminal, pointedly avoiding other human beings and making my way back to the ship, whose comforting silence was a balm after the sensory assault of the penthouse.
"Commander," came Midnight's voice from an overhead speaker, "are you well?"
"I'm fine. Just needed to get the hell out of that party."
"Most people on this station would sell their own parents into bondage to go to one of Lord Evyn Bartleby's fetes."
A picture of the young woman who sold herself as a pleasure-slave to get out from under her debts flashed abruptly and violently into my mind. All of a sudden I felt the brandy and canapés from the party begin to come back up, and I couldn't prevent myself from losing them both onto the gleaming metallic floor tiles just outside the door to the bridge. Unpleasant as it was, I was thankful for the moment of oblivion that comes with vomiting, because at least while I was doing it I wasn't thinking of her.
Thinking of them all.
"Sir, are you-"
I waved the old man off. "I'm fine, Midnight...actually, no, I'm not fine."
"Clearly, sir. Perhaps you need to drink some water and lie down for a few hours. Your alcohol consumption of late has been...accelerated, shall we say?"
"Don't go there," I warned. "It's been a wheel of death and deliveries lately, and if I'm big enough to blow scumbag pirates into molecular vapor, then I'm big enough to have a drink afterwards as well."
"You could give yourself a reprieve from your duties for a few days if the workload is too great." The old man sounded hurt, which made me feel like a heel for snapping at him.
"It's not the work, or the workload," I sighed. "It's the boss that's the problem."
"The Empire, you mean?"
I only nodded in response, knowing that Midnight has visuals and could see the motion. I watched in transfixed fascination as cleaner-robots busied themselves dusting down and scooping up the contents of my voided stomach, returning the floor to its former pristine state before disappearing into various wall panels to dispose of their cargo somewhere in the ships unseen nether regions. Am I like them, just a robot whose job it is to clean up the vomit off of the floor of the universe? Or am I something worse?
An assassin. An assassin who works for slavers. Some Lord, I thought grimly.
"You know," I said at last after many long seconds of silence had passed, "I think you're right, my friend. A pitcher of good old H2O and a few hours of sleep might be just the thing I need. Wake me if anything catches fire."
"Aye aye, Commander."
I knew before my eyes closed what form the nightmares would take. In dark dreams I wandered a shadowy pleasure-garden, carrying a whip in my right hand and a pair of shackles in my left. The gardens stretched around me, labyrinthine, and somewhere out there I could hear her, the slave girl, fleeing from me in terror and begging me to leave her alone, to set her free.
But it is the nightmare, and I cannot leave her alone, cannot set her free. Instead, my hand tightens about the handle of the thong, and I rattle the chains of the bonds I carry menacingly, and in a voice that is/is not my own I call out to her that she cannot run, and she cannot hide.
It was the reverse of every nightmare I've ever had where I was being pursued by some unknown horror which moved with preternatural swiftness and grace while my own limbs were leaden and weighed down with weariness. In this nightmare, it was I who was swift and she who was slow. I the monster, she the prey, and I caught her every time and clapped the irons about her slender wrists and flayed her bare with the bloody whip, all the while with her screaming and begging and calling out in sorrow, her pleas for freedom and mercy dissolving into simple animal cries of pain. I felt and saw with horrifying clarity both the tears burning scalding twin tracks down my cheeks and the unforgivable torturer's grin of delight engraved infernally upon my nightmare-monster's face like a skull's rictus.
I was me, whip in hand, face replaced by a caricature of a fiendish, leering demon...
I was her, prostrate in a spreading pool of my own blood, my mind fading into a pink cloud of shock and terror, waiting for the monster looming over me to drink my soul over the course of a lifetime of degradation...
For the first time of many that night I woke screaming and bathed in a slime of icy sweat, only to fall back into an unquiet yet exhausted slumber to repeat the nightmare again.
I do not ask for pity for this night I spent as torturer and tortured, for I deserve no pity. I am a Delivery Assassin Lord working for slavers, and these nightmares are the price of my complicity. I know now that even if I were to turn my back on this whole stupid quest for a Dukedom, I would be seeing the slave girl in my nightmares for many sleepless nights to come. I've heard rumors that there are those who work to free Imperial Slaves through fair means or foul, and for the sake of my own sanity and sense of decency, I am going to have to contact them, if they even exist.
I pray that they do, because if not, I might not be getting much sleep from here on out.
o7
CMDR Smertkopf