The Serpents and the Skulls, Chapter 5.3
09 May 2017Michael Wolfe
I swore, the woman thought. I swore I’d never return to this höllisch place.
The fiery orb of BD+14 4559 1 loomed before her canopy view. The last time she had beheld this inferno was-
Her brow furrowed. Ten years? Eleven? Eleven years since I sent that devil back to hell, she thought.
Somewhere on the surface of the raging inferno was the spot where Rabat Morgan had died, her contract fulfilled. But that hadn’t been the end of it. Her wing was destroyed, and she found herself alone in a sector where crossing a Morgan meant death. Even if the patriarch was gone, lesser members of his clan would assert themselves by extracting vengeance upon the one who killed him.
Very soon, the woman learned that to survive the demons pursuing her, she would need demons of her own to protect her. And thus the decision was made. She abandoned her old life as an Imperial, swore eternal loyalty to the Nijkas Gold Crew and its Great Serpent, and bared her arms to receive their mark.
It hadn’t been that simple, of course. She hated the Gold Crew almost as much as she hated the Morgans. She hated them even more after doing what was required to prove herself a worthy addition. By the time she was finally initiated into the clan, the blood of fellow Imperials had stained her hands deep red. There was a price on her head all across the Empire, a bitter dose of irony for one who had made her bones as a bounty hunter.
At first, the raven-haired woman kept her head down, living in solitude and never involving herself in clan politics. In some ways, her new life was identical to her old one- she hunted down those who had been marked for death, and had no qualms about charging a fee commensurate with her skill. In time, she was even allowed to travel into the Bubble, seeking out the various underground ship engineers that were the stuff of whispers and rumor. Her new ship, a Fer-de-Lance as black as midnight, was the only joy she reserved for herself. It was her home, her sanctuary, and the symbol of what she had become. As the years passed, the sleek vessel became much like its owner- dark, beautiful, and ever deadlier as the old and standard was replaced with the new and unique.
As expected, the Morgans soon turned their attentions to each other, continuing their bloody tradition of being their own worst enemy. The woman quietly observed the slaughter and for a time almost felt safe. There was only one who could have united them: the sole heir of Rabat himself. But she was absent from the struggle, turning her back on her legacy and living the life of a drug-addled, small-time pirate. Yet as much as she wanted to, the woman never trusted her safety to seemingly benevolent fate. Such vicissitudes had reduced her to exile, and the directionless, dreadlocked woman could still rise to greatness if given the proper motivation.
And so the years passed. The raven-haired huntress stayed in the shadows of Pegasi, refusing to be warrior mated and further embracing solitude. When not engaged as a messenger of death, she kept an ever-watchful eye on the last true Morgan.
When Harvestport was firebombed, she flew close by and unnoticed as Marra fought hopelessly against a superpower, just another ship among many.
In Tanmark she inspected the floating wreckage of the passenger shuttle, mercilessly destroyed with all aboard lost for no other reason than because Hana- a common serving girl- had dared slight Marra over a matter of imported onionhead.
In Unkto she stalked her quarry in secret, her powered-down Fer-de-Lance a shadow amid the blackness of space. There, she eavesdropped over the general comms as the woman cruelly counted down with the doomed merchant, his emergency life support expiring as they reached zero together.
Even without that hired fool Raffi faithfully relaying reports of her activities, it would have been clear: the blood of the Morgans flowed strongly in Marra’s veins. And when Raffi’s usefulness was nearing an end, it had been her who contacted Pietr Menzek to inform him of his whereabouts. Then as before she waited, as Marra unhesitatingly disposed of the man to whom she had found herself slowly opening up. It had been instructive to witness. Neither the innocent nor the trusted were safe from Marra's wrath. Truly she was her father's daughter, even if she despised the fact.
Flying her Fer-de-Lance away from the scene, the woman paid Menzek for his work and took possession of Raffi’s cryopod. But she didn’t open it until she had need of his services again. There was still a glimmer of hope in her heart, after all. That Marra would turn away from her dark path. That she would be killed. That she would find love, such as it was in Pegasi. But the woman’s hopes faded. With each new act of cruelty, with each step closer to fulfilling her father’s legacy, Marrakech further occupied her thoughts. In time, it became clear that Rabat’s demise was the not the end of exterminating the Morgan line but the beginning. Concern gradually gave way to obsession.
The woman redoubled her efforts, accepting several jobs to hunt down the illegitimate and obscure among Marra’s far-flung line. A reunified Morgan clan was a risk too great to take, though she knew that she would never kill them all. It was only when the meddling Imperial arrived at the court of Solomon Adissa and became warrior-mated to Marra did the woman again turn her full attention to her. Marra would never have agreed to such a union without ample cause, inheriting as she had her father’s disdain for the Empire. The huntress made ready to pursue and glean any information that she could of her prey’s motives. If she was right, then it was only a matter of time before Marra would start to search for the location of her father’s treasure- and those few remaining souls who knew its location.
It was a shock when her clan Elder informed her that none other than Degginal DeVerre had requested her presence at his nightclub. Negotiations were conducted and mutual guarantees of safety secured, and the woman found herself a million credits richer for simply agreeing to a meeting. Curiously, she was to speak with the same Imperial that had unwittingly married her nemesis. Assured but still weary, she arrived at Clair Dock not knowing what to expect.
The conversation with the warrior-mated outsider was illuminating. He was a hard man, a fellow bounty hunter who- like herself- had underestimated the trap that was Pegasi. Yet in his eyes was the humanity that she’d convinced herself she would never again encounter. She felt herself pitying him even as the simple act of a shared drink brought forth the long-suppressed loneliness that had plagued her life in Pegasi. In the end, she agreed to divulge the secret of Marra’s legacy in exchange for the promise that he not repeat her mistakes. Though stirred by the first feelings of warmth in years, she wouldn’t hesitate to take two lives instead of one if he was at her side when the moment came.
As expected, Marra the small-time druggie pirate tracked down her father’s mysterious treasure and emerged a changed person. No longer timid and self-loathing, she ascended to DeVerre’s side as Black Omega swept through its corner of Pegasi, devouring system after system. Hearing the Morgan name again on people’s lips, the woman immediately saw her mistake. Rather than being sated, Marrakech’s appetite for power had only grown as she reveled in her father's legacy. The huntress knew that she could wait no longer.
The trap had been a cunning one. Revive Raffi, tell him that she had paid his bounty, and use him and his network of contacts to track down his would-be lover. There had been little need to persuade him, for his earlier fondness for the dreadlocked pirate had been replaced with cold hatred. And it had only been too easy to catch her away from the protection of her fleet, ambushing her in as she was gloating over the body of that corrupt fool Bisley in his own disabled Imperial Cutter.
For a brief moment, Marra had been hers. Helpless and trapped, the huntress had felt an almost sexual joy in forcing her prisoner to relive her terrible past. The pirate’s body she had promised to Raffi- but wrecking her mind was a pleasure she reserved for herself. But it wasn't to be. The Morgan was more resilient than anticipated, the Flashback coursing in her veins but failing to break her. To compound her problems, a rescue party from Black Omega appeared in low orbit, speeding to their location. There hadn’t been time to move her captive, not in a way that would be safe for either of them. So the raven-haired woman shot Raffi with a stun blast as they were preparing to board her ship, leaving him the unpleasant choice of either telling the full tale of his deception or dying at the hands of her pet brute.
It should have ended that day, the woman thought. It should have, but it didn’t. Ten more minutes- five, if she broke her promise to Raffi- and the last true Morgan would have been snuffed out, her guilty blood in a pool at her feet.
And since then? The Pirate Queen had only continued down the path of darkness- enslaving, murdering, and manipulating until she had surpassed even her father in power. But it wasn't enough. Whispers in the darkest corners of Pegasi had upheld the rumor that a certain malevolent madness had been slowly taking hold of Marra, driving her to commit ever more vile acts. Some claimed that she was simply the latest in a long-cursed line of monsters, a sign of the gods’ displeasure. It mattered little. The tales of old never dwelled on why the beast dealt in savage bloodshed- only the glory that came to the hero who slayed it.
And so the woman ordered the last of her clan to attack, to throw themselves against the assembled fleet of waiting Black Omega ships in a last bid to rid the void of certain evil. It had been a trap, of course. Marra had deliberately let her location be known. But like her father, she underestimated the resolve of her huntress. In the midst of a stirring pre-battle speech worthy of remembrance, the woman had made a show of destroying her flight suit, cutting it off in long strips that brought to mind the ritual of the Shedding. She would be clad in only her leathers, arms bared and vowing before the Great Serpent to win or die in the old way. Her gesture inspired those around her, filling them with the fanatical zeal and bloodlust for which the Serpents were rightly feared. Hearts beat like battle drums as her final, passionate words ensured that their final hour would also be their finest.
And thus was the final battle of the Nijkas Gold Crew initiated. To the last ship and man, they descended upon their foes with righteous hatred, their hearts yearning to extract one last measure of vengeance for the extermination of their clan. Ships great and small swarmed over the flowing hellscape, dealing death to each other in a mortal contest of will. The Skulls fought to protect their leader, cloistered as she was in her father’s obsidian monument. The Serpents fought to leave their mark in the memories of man and legend, to turn the rivers of flowing lava beneath them into a place of hallowed infamy.
In the face of the cool professionalism of the Skulls, the Serpents danced and fought like the warrior poets of antiquity. At the urging of their raven-haired leader, they targeted the engines of their prey, moving gracefully between their larger, heavier ships and sending them crashing to the primordial surface one by one. The Skulls attempted to mimic this tactic, but to lesser avail. The comm channels for both sides were filled with the screams of those who had been shot down, doomed to slowly descend into the molten rock, lava pouring in around them through the cracked and broken canopies of their ships. Those with intact bridges surely suffered an even more dire fate. If the ghost of Rabat Morgan was lonely, scores of the damned would join him that day.
Whether it was the will of the Great Serpent or simple tactical calculus, the remaining ships of the Black Omega force withdrew, the few nearest stragglers blasted as the rest retreated into supercruise. Jubilance spread throughout the Gold Crew. The screams of the dying were drowned out by the cheers of the living. The Great Serpent was with them, it was claimed. All was not lost.
The huntress knew better. There, hovering in place near the towering obsidian monument was a lone Python, black with red stripes and the telltale twin skulls on its sides. A pair of weighted cables with personal harnesses led from the rear entryway to the volcanic island beneath it. The battle was won, but the war not yet over. Nor would it be as long as Marrakech of the clan Morgan still drew breath.
Using the last of their ammunition, the multicannons of the huntress’s ship shredded the Python’s maneuvering thrusters, causing it to drift and violently skid into a neighboring volcanic island. It ploughed across the volcanic rock, creating a shallow channel in which the surrounding lava slowly seeped. Flames licked along the savaged hull, thick black smoke ascending skyward from the wreckage. The ship would never fly again. Her quarry was trapped, and there was only the final task ahead until a decade’s worth of work was done.
Disdaining the use of a cable to descend to the island, the woman hovered her ship ever lower to the primordial surface. In an arrogant display of piloting skill, she set the autopilot to remain in the exact spot where her entry ramp would touch the rocky surface of the island. Unstrapping herself and ordering her surviving clansmen to set up a perimeter around her, she rose from the pilot’s chair and strode down to the main entryway.
The ramp unsealed itself and slowly descended, filling the air with the hot stench of the hellscape before her. The huntress’s raven hair lifted and danced, the winds beckoning her to her fate. With a deep breath that almost choked her, the woman gathered her courage and her gear. In her left hand she took a loaded plasma carbine, and in the right the same razorwhip with which she’d cruelly dispatched Azalea Constantinestu. Years of obsession and planning had led to this moment. There was no turning back.
One heeled boot stepped in front of the other as she descended the ramp, her leathers creaking around her hips. Her mind was calm; her purpose clear. Scores had died so that one more could join them. In the roar of the raging inferno, the pleas of those damned by the Morgan line could almost be heard. But it was not for them that she had acted. She had simply seen an opportunity and seized it. Her memory focused, recalling the steps taken that had led her to this place:
The secret meetings with the envoy, persuading him to agree to Black Omega’s terms for annexation, no matter how ruinous. Handing him the tiny devices that he would plant on Marra if possible, but Azalea if not...
The look on the Elder’s face as she informed him of his son’s betrayal, selling out his clan for the sake of a youthful tryst. The look of outrage in the envoy’s eye as she gutted his Anaconda with her multicannons- and his screams as he was held down and skinned on his own father’s orders...
The final goodbye with the previous Black Dragon, the only lover she’d taken in her time as a Serpent. That had been the hardest step of all, administering by her own hand the black market combat enhancers to induce feelings of euphoric invincibility. A single tear had trailed down her cheek as she placed the detonator in his hand and shared a final, lingering kiss. His self-sacrifice had been necessary, a critical early blow against the Skulls- but she wept for him regardless. Hers had been the last ship to depart Serpent’s Respite as the Skull fleet closed in…
In the distance, a concealed door at the base of the obelisk slowly opened. At first there was only blackness within, but soon a pair of figures emerged. One was petite and feminine, a red leather overcoat flapping around her knees, blown by the hot wind. The other was massive- a monster of a man, clad head to toe in black armor and a faceless reflective visor.
Ah, meine kleine Amsel, the woman thought. Even here you cannot bear to be alone, ja? That is the difference between you and me. That is why you will fail.
Glowing flakes of fresh volcanic ash danced in the air. The huntress’s boot stepped from the smooth composite of her ship’s ramp to the jagged volcanic rock of the island, crushing a few pebbles as she did so. The Black Dragon of the Serpents and the Pirate Queen of the Skulls regarded each other amid the swirling morass.
It was time.
The huntress stepped toward her nemesis, her left hand holding the plasma carbine over her shoulder in an arrogantly relaxed manner. Her other hand tightened around the ornate handle of the razorwhip, uncoiling it with a flick of her wrist, the decorative serpent’s head snarling in her grip…