Heroes and Monsters
23 Jul 2020TripleRazor
A huge, piebald dragon slowly nosed its way into the docking bay of Jameson Memorial. Landing gear extending, the Imperial Cutter One Of These Days glided to pad seventeen, and clunked down, rocking as if weary from the flight. Dust and vapour momentarily surrounded the ship as the pad descended into the hanger below.On the bridge, Tristan Raynor rose from the pilot’s chair, stretching tired limbs. The fabric of his flight suit, the colour of dried blood, creaked. And then the standard ritual. Commodities market...sell. Four hundred and forty-eight tons of fine leather from Bhil Mina. Place a request for servicing...hmm...paintwork can wait for now..
The click of boots behind him signalled the entrance of Isaac Balthory. Raynor turned to face him, studying the clean-shaven, deeply lined face, white crewcut hair, a plain blue jumpsuit over the RemLok. He recalled finding the man living rough on Fowler Orbital, Dvorsi. Three local thugs were taking it in turns to kick him as he lay on the ground. Raynor had...intervened. Balthory was an Imperial Navy veteran. All his savings had gone on palliative care for his wife. Too proud to consider slavery, he had become desitute, his only possessions of worth his service medals, which those lowlives had been after. At least one of the thugs would never bother anyone again.
Raynor had taken the old warrior on as a facotum. Not exactly second-in-command, neither a subordinate. He was more a caretaker. He loved starships and knew about the little details of looking after them, so he was in his element.
“I’ll probably be away a few hours, Mister Balthory. So business as usual. Once she’s all sorted, you and the twins have some shore leave. I’ll give you warning when I’m heading back!”
“Aye aye, sir!” Balthory flipped a casual salute, turned smartly on his heel and left the bridge, to go see Sara and Danielle Aquino, the ship’s engineering crew. Petite, blond and unbelievably clever and talented, they had that twins’ ability to finish each other’s sentences. Raynor always went for maximum automation on his ships, so these three were more than capable of crewing even such a large ship as One Of These Days.
He ambled down the ostentatious boarding ramp of the Cutter, crossed the pad and headed for the hanger exit. He turned, leant on the handrail and allowed himself a few moments to admire his pride and joy.
What’s in a name? He remembered when he had bought her, what, two and half years ago? The vessel had sat in a storage bay for months, whilst he put together the cash and materials to outfit her. He had joked with Jehnah, his old friend and occasional wingman that ‘one of these days, I’ll actually get to fly this thing!’ And the name had stuck.
Names. Names had power. With more than one of his ships, he had picked a name, and had a run of bad luck with them...until inspiration struck and he realised what the name should be...and the bad luck went away. Names. A name gave people power over you, which is why he, like many other pilots, used an alias. TripleRazor. That was how he was known. Why? Like so many details about the past, it had slipped his mind…
The clerk behind the desk at the shipyard office greeted him cordially. “How may we help today, Commander?”
“I’d like a ship out of storage, please. TR-76C.”
The clerk nodded and swiped a finger over his screen. “Confirmed. Bay thirty. The team are a bit busy today, so might take a few minutes.”
“No problem. Thank you for your time.”
His footsteps echoed around the empty hangar as the door hissed shut behind him. He leant on the handrail and his thoughts turned inward once more.
He had a collection of, what, eighteen starships now? A lot of them were retired or semi-retired, because he was a sentimental old bugger and a bit of a hoarder. And yet, every so often, one of those mothballed ships would suddenly be just the right thing for the task at hand.
The handrail vibrated, and the thump and clatter of machinery roused him. A gust of deathly cold air swept up from the storage area below and a ghostly shape rose towards him. TR-76C. A Lakon Alliance Challenger.
He watched as the pad came to a halt, and made his way towards the ship, noting the ice crystals glittering on the canopy. Memento Mori. ‘Remember you must die’. A message to both the pilot and their opponents. He had bought this for the sole purpose of helping in the fight against (okay, okay, suppression) of the renegade Nova Imperium faction several years ago. He couldn’t recall why he hadn’t thought his Fer-de-Lance would have been up to the job.
But now the Challenger was going to get a new lease of life. It would take a while to refit it to the design he had in mind. Hunting Thargoids. He wouldn’t have considered such a role, once upon a time, but there came a point where you had to make a choice. The devastation and suffering were unacceptable to any rational human. He already had an AX Krait MkII docked down in HIP 16753; rather than charge straight into full-on battle, he had cautiously tested his mettle against Scouts, which the Krait was ideal for. But his one tentative engagement with an Interceptor…after thirty seconds, he had turned the ship and ran like hell. This would need something with a bit more clout.
Yet he did not, and never had, considered the Thargoids to be evil. He smiled, remembering the, uh, animated discussion that Rose and he had undertaken, one evening, whilst working their way down a bottle of Morana-distilled gin…
“How can you say that?” she had exclaimed, tossing her coppery hair back and glaring at him, “they kill and destroy without any kind of discrimination! Men, women and children!”
He topped up his glass and regarded her. Rose. Who went by the name of Niugnep Tep, when piloting. An odd alias, to be sure, but no stranger than any other out there.
“I’m not condoning what they have done,” he said firmly, “this is a war and they need to be stopped. But they’re not evil; they’re alien. You can't pin human values onto an unhuman species!”
Rose planted her chin on a fist and took a drink. “But the things that they have done...if humans had done it – and they have, in the darker times of history – would be called evil!”
“Point taken. But do you see where I’m coming from?”
“Only just,” she said grudgingly, “are you sure you aren’t a Far God cultist?”
He raised an eyebrow and politely raised his middle finger at her. She laughed. He slugged gin and continued.
“Everyone calls them bugs, right? They’re insectoid. No matter how intelligent we perceive them to be, they’re insects. Look at an ants’ nest. An intruder tries to get in, the nest, as an entity, fights back. Humanity went stamping into the Pleiades...and the nest fought back.”
She tossed back her drink and stood. “Oh very clever. But still….they’re monsters.” She strode away and halted at the hotel room window, arms folded.
He quietly walked up behind her, gently placed his hands on her hips. Parted her hair with his face so he could plant a kiss on the back of her neck.
“Stop that, Tris. I’m not done been grumpy with you.”
“Hmm...and what will it take to make you not-grumpy, foxy lady?” Slipped his arms around her waist.
She let out a big sigh, placed her hands on his. “I just think….oh I don’t know any more.”
He rested his head on her shoulder, nuzzled her left cheek, just below the deep scar that ran through the eyesocket.
“But hey. Morality issues aside...I’m still going to go and blow them to bits.”
“True…”
Stood on the pad, staring up at the ship. He had tapped away on his wristerm, listened to the hum as the Challenger came to life. The hatch did not open immediately; the life support needed to finish cycling the stale air inside.
Once on the bridge, he drew a small datapad from his thigh pocket.
“Okay,” he said to himself, “this is what we have…” Swiped a finger across the screen. “And this is what we want!”
He studied the specs on the datapad. Essentially a straight copy of a vessel belonging to one of the great, unsung, Thargoid hunters of modern times, Jordanna Frost. His view of humans was deeply cynical, so tied up in their little mind games, their hidden agendas. Once upon a time, if you had asked him, he would have said that there were no more heroes.
Now, he would admit that was wrong.