Section 99: A Good Man - Part 7 (Final)

Everyone is safe, except for everyone on his list. 

They gave Van and Taino e-blankets out of the helo’s emergency kit to cover themselves with- torn-to-shit visitors were bad optics for Insomnia. Van refused to unclench, shielding Taino in the helo door from beneath his shiny cloak with a body that was beaten, tired and wounded. Then he saw the ridiculous prize coach make its way down the landing berth towards the Closeup Sunrise’s lander and pop its side doors, from which a confused and slightly irritated-looking Telin emerged, carrying a marker case full of casino chips and a bottle of wine. Keeda pranced out from behind her, her own marker case loosely in hand, dancing tipsy on her heels and toes with an open bottle.

Telin’s eyes went wide when she realized she was looking at Van, still standing, even if shot, split open and scorched.

“Holy motherfucking,” she said, breaking into a stride towards him, “you gotta be some real fucking crazy meikio sakada linoka pao-” ‘pelt-taking commando hardcase shadow-demon’ was the translation. Plus some stuff from the Maniro dialect he wasn’t square on, something about being a ‘bullet-eater’, plus more assorted profanity.

“Something like that,” he replied, the beginnings of a smile starting to show on his face.

She shoved him in the chest, hard, with both hands, checking him with both the case and the bottle. Her smile was incredulous, and she couldn’t stop shaking her head at him. Funny thing was, it felt good after everything else.

Taino made his way up behind him, clutching the e-blanket around him like a rain poncho. He was moving like his legs had been tucked up under him for days, and he leaned on Van to keep his weight off his left knee.

“Kensa-Taino,” young sir, “I want you to meet Telin Enara of Maniro.”

“Holy shit, you got him,” she said. “Uh, yeah, hi, I mean, loro mia, Sendra te kensa, ti modda Maniro zi-” ‘I’m honored, Young Lord of Sendra, this agent of the Maniro pledg-’

“Can we just tell them we did the formal Clan shit, so we can get out of here quicker?” Taino said.

“Fair enough,” she said. “KEEDA, DRY UP, YOU HAVE EQUATIONS TO RUN.” Telin bellowed, gesticulating at her cousin to put the bubbly down and get up, yes, no, get up the, no, get up the fucking lander ramp Keeda, people are watching Keeda.

I’m glad boss was accommodating to your mates, the quantum zinged Van’s mind. They seem like good folk.

Van felt a sudden mass fill his hand; the phone, quantum-shifted into place by a spacetime microadjustment. The quantum passed him by, eyed him over their shoulder as they went. 

You can have that back. Now sanitized, for all our interests and protection, but everything that’s yours to see is yours to see, they said.

“Thanks. Guess this is it?”

Don’t know for sure, they said. Pieces may move, decisions might be made, names might need to be crossed off. If you’re going to be the man in play as things are already, like I’m sensing you might be, it’d only make sense that I get a name for my rolodex, should we be in the same neighborhood with similar goals.

Van eyed them. They were wearing shades, in space, and yet he could tell their eyes were smiling. Black lipstick traced the outline of a smirk. They were the shape of a trickster, and yet, for some reason, Van’s instincts told him what he needed to do.

“Canine. You call me Canine for now,” he said, out loud. “You know who to call to get at me, yeah?”

They zinged the sound of a chuckle. Yeah, or I imagine I could just follow the path of destruction. They waved and strode towards the prize coach, it’s top-hatted barker resuming his bellowing about the Fabulous Fortunes to be had at Casino Carnivale.

“Hey,” he said. “Do I get a name? Just so I know what to look for in my spam filter?”

The quantum turned back for a moment, raised their arm, tensed up for a moment, then let it lower, relaxing. As they did, Van had the sudden comprehension of the name Scathach ring clear in his mind, along with the image of an ancient and dark figure with a spear, the words ‘cleaner, killer, consultant’ flashing in quick succession. He clenched his eyes shut, as if from an involuntary spasm, feeling like he was about to sneeze. Then he was fine.

“Weird,” spoke in his mind.

I know, right? they zinged. Mental business card, one of these days I’m going to put up the protocols to do it on an open-source hub. They waved with a fireball salute. See you around, Canine. Get yer lad home safe. Then they left, and didn’t turn back.

“Van, what the hell was that about?” Taino asked, shaking on one leg, but still standing.

“I’ll tell you later,” Van said. “Let’s go home.”

---

There was a lot that Van had learned in his life, and a lot he’d had to figure out for himself. One thing he’d never worked out was how to get to sleep after an op. He was exhausted, despite his enhancements, in fact because of his enhancements- bionic regeneration was taxing and he was fading out, even after having slammed down a thousand calories of rhidling naval Meal, Ready to Eat. 

For what it was worth, it was a pretty good ration.

He’d fade, and his vision would go dark. Then he’d feel the twinge of someone pointing a gun at him from behind and he’d bolt back open awake, feet slamming on the deckplates of an empty cabin, trying to get traction to turn and react. He’d fade, and his muscles would relax, he’d start to tip to the side. Then he’d feel the chunks of the marble plinth flense through his shoulder, get twisted up in the meat, then crack to a stop against his armoured bones, and he’d wake thrashing. He’d fade, and his mind would drift away. Then he’d remember that Brian Charles Grafton was still alive in the galaxy, and his world would turn to red fever rage. Rage he needed to let out.

“You fuck up my ship with your fists, I’m going to watch you make the repairs,” said Telin, somewhere between his fourth and seventh double-armed smash against the floorplates, the sounds of his fists slamming against metal reverberating even against the dampened walls.

He let out his breath out as a snarl, hunched against the ground, coiled like an animal. He stared at her through the red mist, and she met it it without looking away.

The Canine said nothing. It saw nothing in her that caused it to rankle. Van relaxed.

“I, uh. I had a bad dream,” he said.

“No shit?” Telin said, brow cocked. 

The cold white noise of a starship moving FTL defined the silence between them. Van wasn’t sure if he wanted to apologize or break down sobbing. Probably would have done both if he attempted either. So he just held still, and hoped this was still her move.

Her expression softened. “Come on. I’ll make you some tea.”

---

He told her what she deserved to know, which was everything that wasn’t going to hang his trauma on her. She didn’t need to know the gritty details. She didn’t need to know the ways and means that he’d used to kill people throughout the decade he spent as a killer puppet. She didn’t need to know that he knew what it was like to once stab someone to death with a broken piece of porcelain because it was the only thing he had on hand. She didn’t need to know how deep your heart sinks when one kill becomes too many more, all because someone opened the wrong door, took the wrong stairs, looked the wrong way. She didn’t need to know how he figured out if he’d just killed someone decent, by opening their phone’s keyboard, typing ‘I’ and seeing how close ‘love you’ is to the top of the predictive text.

She got the broad strokes that painted a full picture. Zipped up and disappeared at 17, because he ticked the wanted boxes- low grades but high test scores, able-bodied and athletically capable, history of fights on his record. There were flashes of half-remembered ugliness. First came the school tram exploding in an ‘insurgent attack’ to cover his abduction, though she didn’t need to hear about how he was sure his best friend Orson died beside him, his face torn off by shards of glass pushed on a blast wave. Then there was the operating room, how he woke up with people putting new parts of him into him, but he spared her the part where it wasn’t a mistake that he was awake for a lot of the process, and that he’d never forget the smells and sounds for as long as he’d live. Then came the proving stages, first testing, then training. Testing to see if his strength and durability enhancements worked properly, strenuous testing; testing to see if the tactical coprocessor and the loyal Canine it brought with it would melt his brain or not. Every day at 0500, a buzzer would sound, and the kennels would open with him and the others being dragged out by their leashes; every day, there’d be one or two less, until it was just him and a few others.

He started formulating a way in his head to describe to her what it was like to be led around his knees, on a hardcrete floor, compelled to keep kneeling matter how painful and exhausting it got, only allowed to get on his feet until people he hated told him to ‘stand, boy.’ 

Then he decided that wasn’t for her, either.

The tests would mutate into training. First, it’d be the ghouls in the smocks and masks that were holding the guns and the knives to see if they were really that hard to kill, really that numb to pain. Over time, they’d become so furious, so pent up, so bent beyond recognition, they’d be unleashed on one another, with weapons too small caliber to pierce their internal armouring, blades too blunt to cut through. Stim-sense combat simulations ran in his sleep, dreamed and guided tours of killing fields, with points of tutorial at each step along the way. It was the Canine leading him along his mind, and when he woke, the Canine would lead him along in body. That's when he’d run killhouse scenarios with live ammo, again and again, that sometimes were filled with holographic targets, but sometimes had restrained prisoners with prop guns instead. He wanted to resist, and he tried to at first; the Canine would snarl and bite down on his nervous system, make his limbs and joints work while making everything hurt regardless. Eventually, it just became easier to go along, retreat, close his eyes in his mind and let the beast do its business. Hit this steel pillar until your hands split open, we need to test if your punching force and stamina is acceptable. One of the other dogs embarrassed themselves, get back in your kennel if you know what’s good for you. Kill this political prisoner, empty handed. You’re hesitating. Why are you hesitating?

Through it all, there was that immaculate bastard, Brian Charles Grafton. Watching. Smirking. Looking like he had places to go and shit to do, like ARGUS wasn’t the most a man like him could ever hope to fail his way up to. Never had the same suit and tie twice. Always looking like he was above the atrocities he penned his name on the line beneath; always demanding more, despite. Higher secondary bodycount, liquidate the security team. Make an example of the primary. No witnesses. The primary should have suffered more, make a better example next time, idiot. Leave one witness and mangle him. Shut up with your whining, ‘ohh, it’s a hab complex, ohhh,’ burn it you coward. You worthless lunatic, who asked you to do that? Nothing but a big, stupid animal, you’d be dead without me at this point.

The worst thing he was willing to share, was that after a while, he could tell when he was going out on behalf of the real suits, the Sol Principality or Consortium guys, and when he was going out on behalf of Grafton. SolPrince suits generally wanted dissident types dead, social commentators, union organizers, celebrities that don’t tow the line. Consortium nobles used him to kill people the Imperator was angry with, subject-smugglers and rebels, as well as members of noble houses that had grown embarrassing. But Grafton? He was a man joyriding an assassination program, unleashing hell on his petty rivals, people who slighted him, people who annoyed him, people who once-upon-a-time got one up on him, so he’d even the score by leaving them suddenly without heads, or without families instead. As was his privilege as director. That was all it took, that one word, that title, that Van couldn’t say no to. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he wanted, he couldn’t say no.

It was what he kept repeating when he sank off the couch to his knees. Again, she put her hand out; again, he reached for it, clenched it, cried into it. For a long time.

She helped him to his feet, half putting her five feet-three inches into hefting his bulky ass up, half urging him up with a quiet “c’mon, tough guy” as she slid him back onto the couch. She eased one of her auntie’s tea mugs into his hands, bid him to at least breathe in the spices if he wasn’t going to drink. He took a deep breath, five seconds in, five seconds out, repeating until he could get the pulse out of his ears, get the shake out of his hands.

“And this motherfucker has the gall to still be alive, after all he’s done,” he said, after a while, shaky and through his teeth. He looked up at Telin, cleared his throat deeply. “This motherfucker has the gall to get so close to me I can smell his shitty cologne waft by, in my mind. Like he just brushed me with his hand.”

“Keep breathing,” Telin nodded. “Take a sip.”

He did as told. The tea was spicy and sweet, and hot enough to scald his lips. He was thirsty and boiling already, so he tossed it back in one go and swallowed the pain- scalding be damned, he could regenerate.

“You’ve had a hell of a day,” she said to him. “You don’t owe me anything, you didn’t even owe me the story.”

Van let his breath out as a growl and a roil of heat. “I’m going to kill him,” he said, hands tightening around his empty mug.

“Yeah, let me just, yeah, get that,” she said, taking Aunt Misa’s mug carefully out of his mitts.

He sucked in another breath and blew it out like smoke. “Oooh, I’m gonna kill the fucker.”

Telin said nothing. Rhidling clan culture under foreign occupation meant this was around the hundredth time she’d heard a vow of violent revenge from someone with a precedent for following through. That didn’t mean she was an expert in knowing how to respond to it. Thing was, if everything he Van said was true, and he had no reason to lie, not especially after what he’d shown her on that phone? She was kind of feeling the idea of Grafton being dead. Especially after having helped him patch up Taino. 

Even so, it wasn’t her time or her place to speak.

“I’m going to make every single person connected to him suffer, I’m going to rip down everything he’s built and wrap it around his neck, so the last thing he sees when he suffocates is the fucking monster he signed off on,” Van said, teeth clenched, each word more furious and frantic than the last, until he was growling, near-incoherent, practically slavering from the mouth.

Telin reached out and took him by the shoulders. He raised his gaze to meet hers, all but lashing at her, but he stayed planted on the couch. She unfolded her claws and dug them into his sleeves, not out of aggression but an act of comfort- don’t worry, I’ve got you, you won’t slip.

“I speak good English, yeah?” She said to him. He nodded. “So you know I know how to use the word ‘bullshit,’ yeah?”

He nodded, again.

“Yeah. Bullshit, ‘monster,’” she said, squeezing his shoulders.

He started to shake his head, started to tense up and say something. She cut him off.

“I met you beating the shit out of someone, you threw him through a window, off a balcony and stomped him. I’ve seen you choke the same guy with one hand, high in the air and I can only imagine what you just did today, okay? I only heard the sirens. You’re a hammer, you’re a warrior, and you don’t take well to obstacles in your way, you just kick them down.”

She saw his eyes softening. He wanted to say something but his lips wouldn’t move beyond a tremble.

“But everything that you did was toward one goal: bringing home someone that you cared about, a kid from a species that evolved lightyears away from where your species evolved. You came from out of nowhere, and taught a bunch of bad people what real strength and resolve looks like, and you got the job done with every single possible disadvantage put against you. Nobody can take that from you. Nobody can dispute the fact that the kid is comfortable and sound asleep in the other compartment, on his way home, because you did what you did. And you did it free of charge, because someone knew they could count on you, knew above all else how capable you are, what kind of person you are.”

He squinted his eyes, he was cringing, trying to stop the tears. She leaned in close, and said to him quietly:

“You’re a good man, Van Parker.”

Then he realized, why bother trying to stop tears?

---

He had sat alone on that couch for a long while after Telin left him, sure he was in a better place. He felt, at the very least, stable, as though he wasn’t a risk to breach the ship’s hull with a sudden panic attack. But he wasn’t sure what he was feeling, something he hadn’t really known in his adult life. He knew what he wanted, and he had a direction to get it; he had clarity of mind, and no matter if it was a friendly or a cruel hand, there was nobody holding his leash, because there was no leash. For now, it felt like there was just him, his mark and a whole galaxy to stalk through.

Freedom.

He combed his hair through his fingers, scratched his scalp, stood. He made his way to the bridge and leaned his head in. Telin was in the captain’s chair, zoned into the Sunrise’s systems.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” she said.

“You alright?” he said.

She craned her head out of the chair, shooting him a look. “Are you alright?”

Van considered this, and it took an honest second.

“Yeah, actually,” he said.

Telin nodded slowly at this.

“Good,” she said. “Get some sleep, you deserve it.”

Van felt warm inside. “Thanks. I will.”

He turned and headed back through the ship. He passed Keeda, on her back in a beanbag chair, empty wine bottle in hand, sleeping in front of wrestling. He went further back, and found Taino curled up in the sleeping area they made for him. He was bandaged, and they spiked him with medregen- his cuts and scrapes were closed up to the point of just being red marks. But he was relaxed and his tail was twitching, dreaming. He was older now, pretty much ready to be a man, but he couldn’t not see his younger brother in the kid. Taino being safe meant he felt safe. Which meant he was allowed to feel tired.

He went back to the couch, leaned back, closed his eyes. The Canine made itself known, like a breath on the back of his neck.

“Today was good,” it said. “Today was outstanding.”

“You said we’d meet in the middle. I agreed,” he said.

The Canine growled, curtly and contented. “What next?” It said. It sounded strange, Van never remembered it asking him a question like that.

He gave an honest answer: “Now, you make it so we can sleep to tomorrow.”

“And tomorrow?” asked the Canine.

“Tomorrow, we start all over again.”