Rebuy: Pt.2 - Gunman
17 Feb 2020Princess Nihlus
RebuyA Princess Nihlus Story
. . . . .
Part 2
-:Gunman:-
The grip of the pistol was becoming slick with sweat, tendons creaking on the trigger, gun barrel pushing invasively against the soft tissue of the temple. Princess Nihlus stared intently at his victim who stared back, unblinking.
“I have to know.” said Nihlus, there was no response.
Nihlus pulled the trigger.
. . . . .
The bar was relatively empty save for the game of Hutton Rush taking place in one of the booths which was reaching a very loud, very drunk crescendo. One of the players, a Federation Officer in full uniform, was nearly at twenty-two cards and the throng of would-be hustlers were trying in vain to save the substantial pot. The dealer was failing to maintain control of the group and had an anxious look on his face, hoping the game would end soon. Princess Nihlus watched from the bar with detached boredom and swirled his whiskey gently around the glass with a well manicured hand. High stakes games were commonplace in Harma and anyone with credits could find one easily enough, usually Federal or Imperial types on vacation looking for cheap thrills, a hint of danger and one simple rule:
Never draw first in Harma.
The Fed jumped up from the table and dramatically slapped his cards down bringing the game to a sudden close.
“Boom!” He exclaimed with the grin of a teenager and made finger guns at the table. His joviality was short lived however as a heavily drunk player kicked back his chair, pulled a knife and lunged for the Federal Officer.
The Fed broke the one rule, pulling his gun and firing wildly. The dealer was under the table in a flash and the few remaining patrons scattered. A single round found its mark and the knifeman was dead before he hit the floor. He would have kept firing had his gun not been shot out of his hand leaving the Fed with a dumb look on his face.
Nihlus slid his smoking pistol back into the holster on his thigh and downed his drink. Getting up from the bar he strolled gracefully over to the booth where the dead man was laying in a pool of blood, Nihlus recognised him as one of the dockworkers although he couldn’t remember his name. He turned to the Fed and looked at the man from bottom to top.
“I suggest you take your winnings and get out of Harma. Now.” Said Nihlus flatly, the other players stood staring at the floor.
“Do you know who the fuck I am?!” Screeched the Fed with drunk self importance, thumping a finger into his chest. Nihlus’ red lips twisted into grin.
“No, I don't.” Quicker than the Officer could react Nihlus grabbed the back of his head by the hair and pulled down, twisting his face upwards as he pressed the red hot barrel of his pistol against his cheek, searing his flesh and drawing a high pitched scream. “But at least now you’ll stand out.”
Nihlus tossed the Fed to the floor who scrambled backwards toward the exit clutching his smoldering face and left without his winnings. Nihlus looked down at the dockworkers corpse and stepped back as the blood had already gotten on his favorite shoes, a pair of black and red stiletto platforms with a black cobalt capped heel. He looked at the winnings, then at the dealer who raised his hands slightly, patting the air.
“It’s all good man, it’s all good.” Said the dealer, misunderstanding Nihlus’ intent. Nihlus lit a cigarette and looked down at the body taking note of the name tag.
“Make sure you get some of those winnings to his family.” The dealer bobbed his head nervously at Nihlus.
“We've got this.” said one of the other players, grabbing the corpse by the feet and gesturing to his fellow hustler to take the other end.
“The pot will cover the Rebuy, we just need to get him to his ‘Sidey’” the second man said to Nihlus with a wink as if he were in on something. Nihlus left the bar swiftly without questioning the odd statement and went to complete his business before security turned up.
. . . . .
The bounty office was unusually busy and it took Nihlus some time to see his hard earned credits transferred into his personal account. One of their databases had been fried during a solar flare although Nihlus suspected there was more to it than simple mechanical failure. He didn’t press the issue, wanting to be out of Gabriel Enterprise as soon as possible and far away from that ugly encounter in the bar.
Several hours later he was back aboard his ship ‘Consent’ and cleared the dock with practiced ease. He was barely a dozen light years from Harma when an interdiction hit him, rolling the ship violently and causing every bulkhead to creak and strain. Unable to shake his aggressor, Nihlus cut his Frame Shift Drive and dropped out of Supercruise expecting to find some piss-ant pirate with delusions of adequacy. A hail rang through the comms.
“This is the Federal Corvette Inferus Bellator, you are hereby commanded to stand down.”
Nihlus immediately recognised the voice and switched to visual comms to see a Federal Officer with pearly white teeth and a nasty burn scar on one cheek.
“Oh, hi there pretty-boy! You miss me already?” said Nihlus with absolutely no effort to hide his amusement at the man on screen whose face was growing red with anger.
The Corvette launched a fighter and targeted Nihlus’ ship with a volley of high yield cannon fire that took a significant chunk of his shield strength down. Nihlus kicked in the burn intending to simply outrun the cumbersome vessel, but as he came about three more ships dropped in. It suddenly occurred to him that this Fed scum was most likely the reason for the delay at the bounty office. Nihlus’ amusement fell away as a Gunship and two Assault Ships tore into ‘Consent’ with Plasma Accelerators, bleeding through his shields and crippling his FSD. He knew it was all over but wasn’t about to give them an easy kill. Cutting flight assist he rolled his Fer De Lance and pitched at an impossible angle that would cause many to black out. Several blasts of his modified frags made short work of the Gunship and one of the Assault ships, but the Corvette was on top of him. Nihlus’ shields went down and another volley of cannon fire smashed his power plant causing a reactor breach.
“Eject. Eject. Eject.” barked his ships computer, Nihlus closed his eyes and embraced the inevitable.
. . . . .
When he opened his eyes again Nihlus found he was in a dockside infirmary, a glowing insurance screen floating holographically in front of him. Accepting the Rebuy charge for his ship he swung his feet over the bunk and planted them on the floor. He was still fully dressed including his shoes which were now immaculate, no doubt a result of the extensive decontamination protocols, he made his way out of the infirmary and towards bay twenty-seven where his ship was waiting. The port was bustling with cargo ships and dock workers ferrying goods back and forth, loading and unloading crates to which Nihlus usually paid no mind, but one in particular caught his eye and Nihlus stopped in his tracks. There driving a grav-loader was Devin Calisto. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him, save for the fact that the last time Nihlus saw him he was laying in a pool of his own blood and missing half his skull. Nihlus watched for several minutes as Devin drove the loader back and forth oblivious to his observer, Nihlus moved closer convinced that it couldn’t be the same man. Devin noticed the approaching figure and brought the loader to a halt.
“You want something, buddy?” Devin was smiling as he spoke, like nothing had happened.
“You feeling OK?” Nihlus raised an inquisitive eyebrow, was this some trick or did he imagine the whole episode with the card game?
“Yeah I’m good man, although last night was a total blur. Some sort of bar fight, but I don't remember. Man, I must've been wasted!”
“You have no idea.” Nihlus said dryly and looked closer for any signs of surgery or medical procedures but found none, in fact Devin showed no signs he was even slightly injured, let alone suffered a gunshot wound to the head.
“Yeah my buddies made sure the insurance took care of the medical bills.” said Devin with the same sly wink his friend used the previous night.
“Wait.” said Devin. “Do I know you?”
“No, I think I have you confused with someone else.”
He was back aboard ‘Consent’ shortly after, puzzled by his chance encounter with a dead man walking. He lit a cigarette as he sat down at the helm and began prepping the ship for takeoff. He glanced over at his Status panel and checked his systems and credit balance, but the ship insurance read-out caught his eye. Nihlus powered down the ship and bolted out of the pilots chair, breaking into a run as fast as his impractical footwear would allow he hit the bottom of his loading ramp to try and find Devin amongst the sea of Hi-Viz overalls. It didn’t take long as Devin was still driving the grav-loader over by pad twenty-four and loading up an Anaconda, Nihlus waved him down.
“Sup, buddy? You forget something?” said Devin leaning down from the cab.
“You mentioned insurance earlier, what did you mean by that?” Devin tossed his head back in a wheezing laugh at the question.
“Why, ship insurance of course!” Nihlus tilted his head to one side in confusion, this drew another laugh from Devin which he brought down to a nervous chuckle. From the look on Nihlus’ face his patience was clearly beginning to wear thin.
“Look I don’t know how it works but so long as you can cover your ship insurance then all medical bills get paid.” Devin explained, going into some detail about how the self destruct was activated on his ship by his buddy at the card table, thus triggering the Rebuy protocol. Nihlus absorbed the information without saying a word, nodded a silent thank you to Devin and walked back to bay twenty-seven. None of this made any sense. Devin was dead, of that there was no doubt, yet here he was carrying on about his working day as normal.
Nihlus needed answers and as soon as he was clear of the dock he began trawling through Gal-Net for a system with a high number of Rebuy claims. He dismissed several systems off the bat, mostly pirate hotspots in densely populated systems full of murder hobos and tin-badge wearing white knights trading kills with each other. He hovered over one system that stood out, way out on the fringes of the bubble and smiled.
"Oh, of course." He said with a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lower lip and plotted a route to Vesuvit.
. . . . .
The journey took longer than expected, his Fer De Lance was not built for long voyages but he had no intention of flying into a hornets nest in anything less formidable. There were at least a dozen ships in the Vesuvit system, all watching, following, waiting for the slightest hint of an excuse to open fire.
To his surprise and relief Princess Nihlus made it to Suri Gateway without incident, docking with the station and powering down 'Consent' he chose to leave his side arm on the ship. There were no rules against guns in Vesuvit, or rules of any kind for that matter, but he considered it rude to take one with him. As he stepped off the ramp he was immediately tackled to the ground and pinned in place with a knee on his back. Keeping his composure Nihlus simply said "I submit to Chaos."
His assailant promptly jumped up at the greeting and hoisted Nihlus to his feet. Nihlus turned to face him.
"Cake?" He said with surprise.
"Princess!" Said Cake "Sorry I didn't recognise you!"
Nihlus looked down at his trademark stiletto heels and checked his make up then looked back at Cake who simply shrugged and gestured towards a side door by the customs office.
Cmdr 'Cake' Palmer Griffiths earned his moniker having stolen the wedding cake from just about every Imperial Royal Wedding throughout his inglorious career, nobody knew why but he seemed to revel in it.
"What brings you here, it's not your birthday is it?" Said Cake, licking his lips as he sized Nihlus up like a steak.
"Actually, I wanted to talk about rebuys."
Cakes eyes lit up and he stroked his goatee.
"Go on." He said leading Nihlus to a private bar where his squadron would usually hang out between sewing chaos throughout the galaxy, yet it was strangely empty. Nihlus pulled up a chair and lit a cigarette as Cake poured two
glasses of potent Vesuvian moonshine. It was foul stuff but it did the trick and Princess Nihlus began recounting his experience in Harma.
The card game, the Fed, Nihlus' Rebuy and the dead dock worker's miraculous recovery, Cake listened intently to every detail motioning to elaborate as he filled their glasses again. When Nihlus had finished Cake leaned back and puffed out his cheeks as he blew, nodding as if to indicate his ongoing thought process.
Finally he stood, finished his drink and slammed the glass down.
"Quite a tale, Princess. And I think I know someone you'd be very interested in speaking with." He headed for the door and gestured for Nihlus to follow, leading him to a service elevator that would take them to Suri Gateway's infirmary.
"Time for you to meet the Doctor!" He said and barged his way through the triage centre. It stank of blood and oil with a hint of sex, most of the patients cradling crotch injuries. Vesuvian Sex Robots were hot property due to being jailbroken and their limiters removed, this resulted in some patrons getting more than they bargained for. The Doctor was a miserable looking hag with a prosthetic arm, her fingers replaced with various medical apparatus.
"I have some questions…." Nihlus began addressing the Doctor until Cake's bleating laughter cut him short.
"Not that Doctor, she just handles minor injuries." He wheezed through a chuckle.
"Eat a dick, Cake." Said the doctor, Cake nodded and pushed past her to the lab at the rear of the infirmary.
"This Doctor!" Cake exclaimed with a dramatic sweep of his arm.
There, face buried in a heap of papers, pads and PDA's sat a beautiful young woman in her twenties. She looked tired, dark rings around her eyes and frazzled hair from lack of sleep.
"I'm busy, Cake. What do you want?" She said in a bored tone, clearly nonplussed by the interruption.
"Doc, this is our associate Princess Nihlus. He has some interesting things to say about his recent experiences."
She looked up, did a double take and was about to say something but shrugged the thought from her mind. She'd seen some messed up things working with the Time of Chaos squadron and The Princess' appearance certainly fit that category.
"Princess, this is Dr. Tanosis. You two play nice now." Cake backed out of the lab as he spoke and closed the door behind him. Nihlus froze, a lump in his throat as he recalled the imperial slave with the same name he had spaced out the airlock several months back. This couldn't be the same woman for she was far younger, a relative perhaps?
"Yes?" The Doctor asked impatiently, snapping Nihlus from his thoughts. He was about to begin recounting his experience again but Dr. Tanosis suddenly leaned in and reached up to Nihlus, planting a hand either side of his head. "Your eyes! How long have they been that way?" She was suddenly very animated, the lethargy brought on by her long hours of research gone.
"You mean the lack of colour?" Asked Nihlus "As long as I can remember."
She tilted his head this way and that, most people couldn't meet Nihlus' milky pupil less gaze without discomfort but the Doctor was clearly fascinated. She turned and riffled through a cluttered equipment shelf, eventually pulling a strange helmet like contraption that looked to be cobbled together from bootleg tech.
"Sit." She commanded, Nihlus sat and she proceeded to strap the device to his head and switch it on. Every nerve in his body screamed out as jolts of electrical current coursed through his body making him rigid from head to toe. He nearly cried out from the agony but the pain was short lived. She stood in front of him scrolling through a pad for several minutes before speaking.
"So, Princess." She said looking him in the eye. "How many Rebuys do you remember?"
Nihlus huffed a single laugh, there had been so many he honestly didn't keep track anymore.
"What was that….thing?" Nihlus stared at the helmet as Dr. Tanosis removed it and put it to one side, the sting from wearing it seemed concentrated on the back of his neck.
"I just took a snap-shot of your Grey Box." She said going back to her pad, scrolling through pages of data. "Every single person who goes into the black has one implanted during their Pilots Federation physical. In layman's terms it's a data recorder for your brain, recording everything you do. This syncs up with your ships black box so that, in the event of catastrophic brain damage, you can be reconstructed." She put the pad down and met Nihlus' quizzical expression.
"What are you saying?" Nihlus asked, but he already knew the answer. Between his rebuy and the encounter with Devin in the bar the answer was obvious, but he couldn't bring himself to believe it.
"I'm saying you're dead, Princess. That you and thousands of others like you are not who you think you are, or at least who you were." Nihlus slumped, mouth agape as the reality dawned on him.
Eventually Nihlus looked up at her.
"How do you know all of this?" Nihlus usually steady low voice cracked as he spoke. Dr. Tanosis took her pad and cast an image to the main screen, a face Nihlus had burned into his psyche. It was her, Ellesandra Tanosis, the Imperial slave he had rescued and subsequently spaced at her own request. The lump in his throat came back with a vengeance.
"That was my mother six months ago, prior to her transport for work placement in Cubeo." She tapped her pad and cast a second picture. "This is her eight weeks later." Nilus understood now, there was no mistaking this was the same woman he had watched painfully chewing on vacuum, except for the eyes.
They were just like his.
"The reason your eyes are the way they are is due to incomplete Grey Box data, as if someone went in and scooped out a portion of yourself." She glanced back to the screen. "Someone didn't want her remembering something and I want to know who and what it was!" She spat the words with anger but mellowed as Nihlus stood up, his two metre stature enhanced by his impossible shoes, towering over her. He turned to leave.
"Do you need a minute?" She asked with genuine compassion in her voice.
"No." Said Nihlus, pausing at the door and glancing back. "I need a gun."
. . . . .
Every face he passed, every pilot, everybody, they were all dead. Nihlus' thoughts were a maelstrom as he factored in the friends he'd made, the enemies he'd defeated, it all meant nothing. He pushed through a throng of nasty looking grease-monkeys in the engineering bay near his landing pad. One went to stop him with a heavy wrench held across his chest, but Princess Nihlus was in no mood for foreplay. He reached down, took one of his shoes and embedded the heel in the mechanics eye with a wild swing. Nihlus spun on the rest of them with his other shoe in hand but they backed away so Nihlus retrieved his shoe, shook the gelatinous gore from it and put it back on mid stride.
He marched straight up the loading ramp of 'Consent' and strapped in while powering up the thrusters and completely disregarded any pre-flight checks. He boosted straight off the landing pad and was already doing over five-hundred metres per second before he cleared the station's airlock. Grabbing his pistol he punched his command code into his systems panel and got out of the pilots chair.
Nihlus paced up and down the length of the flight deck, gun in hand as each step of his cobalt capped heels rang out on the cold steel floor plating.
"Self Destruct in thirty seconds." said the computer. But what if it wasn't true? It couldn't be, was he even still him? Would the escape pod systems eject him safely in to space in cryo to be picked up by Search & Rescue?
"Self Destruct in twenty seconds."
Nihlus caught his reflection in the canopy and stared himself down, his milky white eyes locked with his own reflection as he pressed the gun to his head.
"Self Destruct in ten seconds."
Nihlus' hands were shaking, sweat beading on his brow and pooling in the recesses of his eyes, streaking black tears of mascara trailing down his face.
"I have to know." He said with final resolve.
"Self destruct in five, four, three…"
Nihlus pulled the trigger.
. . . . .