Shitstorm! part one

Shitstorm!

                “If luck were a woman, she would have divorced me and taken all my shit with her! God dammed vengeful bitch that she is.” Balistor Stormguard stood outside his crashed Vindicator-class jump ship, subjected to yet another massive downpour. He had only been on this godforsaken planet for just over an hour, and this was the third such downpour that had passed over him. All of the torrential rains soaking him to the core, seemingly blowing in out of nowhere, dousing him and then running away like cowards, afraid of Balistor’s growing rage. If the weather had any metaphysical way of actually knowing who it was aggravating, it would truly run for its life. Many had made the mistake of sticking around far too long, without comprehending the warning signs, and that never worked out to their advantage.

            His ship was partially submerged and ever so slowly sinking further into a pile of mud and rock. It was slowly disappearing into a fetid swamp, where it currently resided at the end of a long trail of broken trees and the myriad of frightened indigenous creatures it had left behind, as Balistor had made a less than graceful landing on the planet he now branded “shitstorm” in his mind.  In reality, according to the Hierarchy, it was labelled “Spacial Quadrant Eighteen, Zone Nine, Sphere Four hundred thirty-two; status: unknown”.

            “Fuck me!” He said to no one in particular. As far as Balistor knew, he was the only intelligent life on this miserable forest-covered rock.

            “Fuck.” He kicked the hull with his armoured power boot, eliciting another slew of curses over his now throbbing left toe.

            “Been out in the black too long, dumbass. How the actual hell did you crash a virtually un-crashable ship on such a small chunk of junk floating in a massive void?” No answers came to him from the trees, save the strong winds rustling the leaves and the rain spattering off his Mark Six tactical enviro-combat helm. Balistor had developed a bad habit of talking to himself.  He told anyone who would listen that this habit was due to the fact that, in his opinion, he was the only one worth talking to.  It was no wonder he had few friends and spent most of his time alone out in the black. Balistor felt at ease flowing in the endless void of space, generally on the outer rim quadrants, far from the hustle and bustle of the inner colonies.

            “Should’a stuck with merc work, not planetary surveying, stupid,” he thought as he started to gear up.

            “Should’a immediately labelled this rock ‘destroy for future space ways’ and flown on by.” Balistor reached into his cargo hold and pulled out another bit of gear. He had been in the outer rim for a long time. As such, he has accumulated a great deal of ‘special gear’. Mostly taken from the targets of past jobs or from anyone dumb enough to have crossed his path at the wrong time or to have said the wrong thing out of turn. Balistor was not known for his calm demeanour nor for having a forgiving attitude. A man of his station, or lineage, would never have been able to afford the tech upgrades to his bolt-on exosuit or the body mods he had amassed over time from the sale of other ‘borrowed’ items from his adventures. His exosuit alone would be more than most would earn in a lifetime. Only military jarheads wore them for free, and he was not the joining-up type. He found all of the paraphernalia invaluable in his line of work and was now glad to have brought them along with him on this simple surveillance mission.

            It took time to get all of the reactive plating snapped onto the exosuit; the extra weight sucked, but he knew from experience that there could well be dangers before him, and the fragility of the human body, even with his extensive mods, warranted gearing up before he headed out. Best to let the plates take the damage first. He affixed a belt-driven arm saw guard to his left forearm, a multimeter scanner to his right wrist and a long, serrated combat knife to his shin guard. Then he attached his BEV to his right shoulder and lastly, he grabbed his particle rail rifle and a half dozen fresh magazines to keep it well-fed just in case shit happened.

            “Best to be prepared, old boy. Got yourself in a pickle now, and god help whatever is on this rock that gets in my way of getting off it.” He used his wrist scanner to detect any damage the ship might have sustained during the crash. Balistor was a good pilot, and he found a relatively soft landing zone, too soft upon further reflection, and as such, he hoped the ship would be undamaged.

            “Hulls intact. Tough buggers the Hierarchy builds, can’t take that from them. Power core is good… but I can’t seem to get ‘er to go?” He kept scanning.

            “Fuck! That’s me done for. Fuuucccckkkk!” he would have spat in disgust on the muddy ground, but one only makes that mistake once when wearing a Mark Six helm. “Motivator drive coupling snapped in half.  Those don’t grow on trees. Not even these big suckers!” He looked around at the noisy, dense foliage surrounding him. It seemed as though the tiny indigenous life forms were mocking him from their hidden concealment. “Fuck off!”

            “Time to get moving, old boy. Get to some higher ground and see what kind of crap you get to deal with. Maybe find some food!” He had opened his galley stores, but water and mud had been packed into it upon impact; most of the food was inedible now. He used his scanner to check the water for any pathogens or dangerous microbes. It checked out clean and clear, so he filled his canteen with rainwater; there was no short supply of that, at least he would not die of dehydration. Balistor let out a long sigh, and he headed off for a large peek a few miles to the north. The scanner read that the air was breathable, but he kept the Mark Six on anyway. He loved the Mark Six for twofold reasons: it saved his melon more than once, and he thought it made him look badass. It was better to intimidate anyone he came across before they got the idea that he was an easy mark; he figured being ‘all geared up’ had helped him avoid a great many conflicts in the past.

            Balistor trekked his way up the enormous mountain utilizing the left forearm chainsaw to hack his way through the thick underbrush. Subtlety was not his best attribute. Given he felt alone on this shitty rock, he did not feel the need for stealth. “Damn them if the little critters didn’t like the noise!”  He cut and pulled his way through the forest, filled with some of the tallest trees he could ever remember seeing. The ground was covered in a thick bed of fern-like bushes and very broad-leafed plants. It was all so… so green. The air was crisp and clear, allowing for a variety of mosses to grow around the edges of the greenery. Hanging down little gray beards off the thick branches.

            After progressing about a third of the way up, he thought he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.  Balistor knelt and crept along, drawing out his long, rail rifle. He used the scope to search the underbrush in front of him. Suddenly, he spied a small fur-covered head that popped into his view. It was on the body of a deer-like creature, but it was standing on its strong hind legs. The strange creature was a soft, greyish-brown colour, with a slim, muscular waist, and it was reaching up into the trees with its three-fingered hands, plucking some sort of fruit and gently nibbling on it. He had the deer-like creature’s head in his sights and was ready to pull the trigger. “Looks like some kind of meat is on the menu tonight.” He thought to himself.  He was about to pull the trigger when he uncharacteristically paused. Looking through his sight, the unsuspecting creature seemed so small and innocent. Balistor took his finger off the trigger, and the creature turned its head to look directly into his sight, “What the fuck?” Balistor thought as it appeared to shake its head back and forth at him, then it dropped to all fours and bounded off into the deep brush.

            “Fucking odd that was?” he said out loud. “Did it know I was about to pull the trigger? Naw, couldn’t have,” he shook his head in disbelief and headed further up the mountain. This planet certainly had its fair share of plant life and small creatures.  He had already noted a dozen forms of small birdlike things flying about and several four to six-legged furry balls of fluff running around… some with long tails, others seemingly just a mass of hair and tiny feet. There was no shortage of little critters to be sure. The deer-like creature had surprised him. It was quite a bit larger than any of the other things he had encountered, and he could not shake the notion that the creature had looked right at him, as if it knew it was in Balistor’s sights.

            He reached the summit of the tall ridge and looked around with his rifle’s sight. He scanned a large plateau on the far ridge of the next mountain range and thought he saw something, so he launched his BEV, a small drone, neurologically linked to his brain and optic implants, to get a bird's eye view of the far ridge.

            “Fuck me! Shitstorm for sure!” he knew his luck would run out one day. This seemed to be the day. “Fucking Aucks! Had to be fucking Aucks. Of all the shitty planets to crash land on in the black, I land on one with an Auckled fucking pursuit vessel.” He moved the BEV covertly along the tree line to avoid detection. The Auckleds were setting up a base camp beside their vessel, romping about on their strong, long, multi-jointed legs, which ended in four talon-like toes, three of which protruded forward and one on their heel.  Auckleds had long, thick necks ending in a pointed snout, with a maw full of rows of razor-sharp teeth. They had thick, broad shoulders with two long, muscular arms and a second set of smaller appendages just below them, set above a slim waistline. Most were predominantly white on their chest, neck, and face, and brown on their backs and the tops of their heads, with the brown spreading down around four sets of red, bug-like eyes. Their skin was thick and covered in several strategic spots, evolved over millennia, by a dense, grey carapace. “Got to be sixteen or more of them bug-eyed lizard dicks slimming about down there. That’s a big hunting party. What the fuck are they doing here? They never come this deep into Hierarchy territory, and this rock is not charted.” Balistor lay on his back as drops of another rainstorm began to splatter off his visor.

            “Shitstorm, indeed!” he sighed. “Stay clear of them, you dumb shit. Aucks is bad business. Don’t need to be anyone’s dinner today. On the other hand, I bet that Pursuit ship has something I can rig up to fix my motivator. No… no, no! Stupid, get that thought out of your head. One of you, sixteen or so of them, probably more. Tech and mods go so far. Brute strength and a distinct lack of brains, along with superior numbers, can go even farther. Just move on and see if you can figure something else out. Steer clear and live to fight another day.” This motto had helped Balistor to avoid many unnecessary altercations.

            He headed down the mountain toward the valley between the two peaks, in the general direction of the deer-like creature he had previously encountered. “Maybe old three fingers got something I can use. Worth a shot anyway.”

            After several gruelling hours of hacking through the thick foliage, he heard a creature cry out twenty yards to his left. Balistor unslung his rifle and headed toward the sound. As he got closer, he lay on the ground and used his scope to see what was making the sound. Through his small sight, he saw two of the deer-like creatures pressed up against a stone wall and a third one, already dead, on the ground. One was quite large, about the size of the one he had seen earlier, and the other was very small. Three of the Auckleds had them pinned up against the cold, hard stone. The Auckleds were speaking in their native guttural language. Balistor did not speak their tongue, and his translator did not have an upgrade to decipher it, but he knew from their demeanour that they were laughing with one another and happy about their catch.

            “Sucks to be those two, I guess,” he thought to himself. “I will just quietly backpedal a bit and get the fuck out of here.” He was about to lower his sight when the smaller of the deer-like creatures looked directly at him.

            “Assist?” he could swear he heard a small voice in his head, “desire, you?”

            “Must be losing my god dammed mind today,” he thought. As he started to back away, one of the Auckleds lifted the smaller deer-like creature.”

            “Help!” Balistor heard this loud and clear in his head.

            “Fuck me!” he sighed and sprang from his place of concealment. His muscles were bio-enhanced along with the pneumatics of his exosuit, giving Balistor far superior strength compared to the average human; he would be nearly as strong as the Auckleds were naturally. The Auckled holding the smaller captive lowered its prey’s throat down towards the Auckled’s tooth-filled maw. A spray of light green blood splattered against the large stone.  Seeing this, the larger captive broke free from its captor’s grasp and lunged between them. The massive alien’s mouth sank down on the throat of the larger prey. Balistor quickly closed the distance to the three Auckleds, and along the way, he fired off a full clip of diamond-tipped frandium explosive needles at the closest one. The powerful magnetism of his twin-rail rifle launched the small darts at six thousand feet per second. With the combination of that velocity, their diamond tips, and the explosive nature of excited frandium, even the thick skin of the Auckled could not turn them aside. The first of the Auckleds dropped to the ground, riddled with small, smouldering holes, dripping out the last of its purple-tinged blood. As it slumped to the ground, this drew the attention of the other two. The now bloodied Auckled, holding the smaller prey, threw it aside while opening its mouth and letting the larger one drop to the ground. It turned its attention to the new combatant charging in at them. The smaller creature immediately crawled over to nuzzle in with its heavily bleeding companion.

            Balistor ran as fast as his augmented abilities allowed, and he launched his full weight at one of the Auckleds, smashing it against the stone wall it had held the deer-like creature to moments before. As he did this, he fired off as many rounds as he could from the fresh clip he loaded midair, into the second Auckled. Most lifeforms would have splattered up against the stone, as Balistor’s bio-enhanced muscle mass, added to that of his gear, would be plenty to crush someone in that manner.  The massive Auckled, however, just absorbed the blow and immediately clamped down on Balistor’s shoulder with its toothy maw.  The reactive plate did its job as best it could as the force of the bit was redirected back as a kinetic charge and sent into the Auckled’s mouth. Smoke billowed out from its maw and several teeth shattered, but this did not deter the powerful alien; it simply bit down harder and crumpled the plate, sinking its teeth into Balistor’s right shoulder. He winced in pain and pulled out his combat knife. Using all his strength, he plunged the blade deep into the side of the towering alien. Balistor strained to keep his weight centred on this Auckled, hoping to partially contain it as he repeatedly stabbed it in the chest. As he struggled, the last Auckled had recovered from the smattering of shots it had taken when Balistor smashed into his hunting mate. It sprang at him with its maw agape as the sun shone off the many rows of serrated teeth, and saliva dripping off its long tongue. Balistor managed to get his left arm up in defence as the Auckled bit down hard. The reactive armour on his arm was thinner, and it snapped as the strong jaws and sharp teeth tore into it and then into his arm. Balistor took the hit as he had planned, and ignoring the pain, he used his neural link to activate his forearm chainsaw.  “Take that, ya hungry bitch!” he thought as he pushed his arm out deeper into the Auckled’s mouth. In seconds, he cleaved the top of the Auckled’s head to the ground, while the one he had pinned to the rock face was losing its vigour due to the repeated strikes of Balistor’s knife into its chest. While it was dying, the Auckled had managed to rip a great deal of his reactive palting off and had started to gouge into Balistor’s body with its talons, but the Auckled’s arms were slowing down as it trickled out less and less of the purple blood from the many holes Balistor had made. Finally, he eased up and let the limp body drop to the ground as purple blood dripped off the tip of his large combat knife.

            Exhausted, Balistor slowly approached the small, deer-like creature as it hovered protectively over the still form of the fallen creature. It stared at him with tears in its eyes.

            Balistor reached out with his bloodied left arm. “I don’t know if you can understand me, little one, but we have to go. It won’t be long before their mates notice they’re gone. We do not want to be anywhere near here when they find three dead Aucks. Trust me, they will be bats shit crazy and looking to get whoever did this. As that be me, well, we gotta high tail it out of here, okay?” He moved his hand closer, and the small creature clung ever more protectively to the dead one. “Look, I get it,” he said, “Is this your mom or your dad? Saved your life by taking that bite, it did. Don’t waste that sacrifice by staying here and waiting. We have to go,” he shook his head, slightly frustrated. “Do you understand a thing I am saying?”

            The small creature looked him in the eyes and slowly took his hand with its three-fingered paw. “Mother,” he heard in his head. The small creature stood, and Balistor led them both deep into the dense underbrush as fast as his wounded body allowed.

            He marched them through the forest for two hours in the opposite direction of the Auckled hunting camp until exhaustion forced him to rest. Balistor had limited regenerative DNA properties, a gift from a former client, whose blood he used to alter his DNA, allowing his body to naturally heal at ten times the normal rate for a human. But his wounds were deep, and they were going to take a long time to get better. Sadly, the rapid curative upgrade did little to diminish the pain. He had great meds that could help with that, but they were back on his sunken ship. Balistor found a large rock jutting out into the underbrush, and he plopped down next to the silent creature. Shortly after they had left the grisly scene of his battle, it had quickly let go of his hand and reverted to walking on all fours, but he had not heard a peep out of it, either aloud or in his head, since then.

            Balistor removed some of his mangled gear as he struggled to catch his breath, and he gingerly stretched out his aching limbs. The small creature approached him and began to lick his wounds. “Hey, what gives? That is not good for you!” he tried to pull his arm away.

            “Will assistance,” he heard in his mind. “Trust.” Balistor paused, looking into the innocent eyes of his new companion. He moved his arm back out, and the creature continued to lick the wounds. The seeping blood soon stopped dripping, and though his arm felt numb, all the pain was gone. The small creature moved to gently lick his chest and abdomen, where the last Auckled had gouged him, and then finally to his shoulder. In minutes, all of Balistor’s wounds had stopped bleeding, and other than the odd tingly numbness sensation, he felt better than he had in ages.

            “Nice trick, thanks,” he said, flexing his hand.

            “Not a problematic,” he heard in his mind, “No hold... I intended… You are welcome.”

            “Another nice trick, you understand the adopted universal language. AUL is not easy to learn. Others like me have been here before?”

            “None, you are the first of your species. Slowly, I study from your thoughts and memories. It will get better as I learn.”

            “Stay out of my head, little one. It’s not for you to play around in.”

            “Apologies. Your thoughts are very loud. It is firm, no… hard, for me not to hear them. We, Onjarwee, learn early on after birth to quiet our minds to others. For us to communicate, I must continue to learn your speech. Your brain would not comprehend ours.”

            “Well, try harder to stay out of mine!” he grumbled. “You speak my language well enough for me. Onjarwee, eh? Never heard of them. This place is a complete unknown to the Hierarchy and, apparently, to all the other known races, except maybe for the Aucks. They sure as hell know about this place. Doesn’t look like the first time they’ve been here, the way they set up camp. Looks like a regular hunting trip for them.”

            “The mean ones have been here before. This is why you were requested to come down.  Mother and I were looking for you to take to the elders.”

            “Requested to come down? What do you mean? I crashed my ship.”

            “The elders heard your thoughts in the outer void. They used their influence to have you come down so we could ask for your assistance. You are the only other one to come here. Only the mean ones have come before, and all they do is kill us. It is their third time here; they come once per cycle. We not understand their thoughts, they keep us out. We not know why they eat us.”

            “Back up a bit there, little one. You’re saying that your people made me crash here? On purpose? Sons of bitches! I barely got my ship on the ground in one piece. For shits sake. I could have died.”

            “We need your help; it seems the only way.”

            “Fuck me,” he thought to himself.

            “I am not sure that we could,” he heard in his mind. “Our two kinds are very different, and for my people, I am still considered very young for the mating ritual.”

            “No! No, no… no! That is not what I meant.” Balistor actually blushed. As he looked at the young Onjarwee, it made a sort of snorting, chuckling sound. “I think this thing is laughing at me.” He presumed it was laughing at him.

            “I am sorry, I was pulling your appendage off. I have learned what curse language means to your kind and why you use it.”

            “Ha, ha, very funny,” Balistor did not laugh or smile. He was not one to let down his guard very often.

            “I understand why you would be upset about our manner to bring you here, but as you can see, we have little in option. We do not have violence in us, and we cannot reason with the Auckled, as you call them. Forgive us, please.”

            “Well, I am not the helping kind, kiddo, and you got a big Auck problem. More than one lone merc like me can help with. Sorry, but I am not gonna be your saviour. I will help you get home, but after that, I am on my way.” He stood up and bolted back on his gear as best he could and motioned for the Onjarwee to get up.

            “What should I call you, little one? I am Balistor.”

            “I know this from your thoughts. You can call me Izzomellia or Izzy for short, as your kind does.”

            “Still reading my thoughts?”

            “Still projecting them too loudly?”

            “Fair enough… scan away.” Balistor gave up trying to keep his thoughts to himself. Izzy was picking up on human sarcasm quickly enough, he thought. “You lead the way, you know where you live. I will watch our backs.”

            “You should watch the woods around us; watching my back will be of little help should there be any Auckleds concealed in the trees,” he heard the snorting chuckle come out again.

            “You’re a hoot, ya know that!” he said.

            “We try to mask our pain with humour, I believe our two species have that trait in common.” Her English was getting better.

            “So that was your mother, then. I am sorry.” Balistor was not sure what to say to comfort the young Onjarwee. Fighting and fornicating were his strong suits, not feelings.

            “Yes, I will miss her dearly. She was the guiding light of my life. I hope to have little ones of my own someday. I can only hope to do as well with them as she had done for me. We volunteered to go and find you, along with one other. The rest were too afraid to enter the woods. Perhaps had you not hesitated to help us, Mother might still be with us. We will never know now.”

            That last bit stung him a bit. He had been about to leave them both to the Auckleds until Izzy’s final plea spurred him into action. He now regretted not springing to their defence sooner. Izzy’s warm thoughts about her mother made him think about his own.  He had been abandoned early on in his life, so he did not know her, but a lingering pain sat in his heart when he thought about her. He had filled that hole with many made-up stories about the woman he did not know. Now he could feel the pain of the loss in Izzy’s words. Why had he not acted sooner? Maybe he could have saved them both.

            “You miss your mother as well?” Izzy asked him.

            “Fuck me! Stay out of my head, ok!” he stormed past her. Balistor did not like discussing his feelings. Specifically, ones about his mother, “I will take the lead for a while. Let me know if we need to turn.” They walked on in silence.

            Balistor’s stomach rumbled as it had been a while since he had eaten, and the fight with the Auckleds had taken a lot out of him.

            “What is a deer, and why are they delicious?” Izzy asked him.

            “What?”

            “Your body is letting you know you need nourishment, and your thoughts went to a deer and how I remind you of them, then you thought about how good they taste. Do you kill things and eat them like the Auckleds do? Did we choose poorly? Are you a threat to us like they are?”

            “I am not a threat to you. As for eating well, sort of. I mean, we used to… long ago. Deer were an animal on the OG planet. Earth, it was called, I think, when deer roamed it. People, my kind, used to eat all kinds of meat: deer, cows, chickens, rabbits, all sorts. Eventually, the demand for meat outgrew the planet’s ability to sustain it. Some animals were hunted to the brink of extinction, while others were so mass-produced that they were destroying the environment with their droppings. In time, some smart eggheads developed genetically grown meat, cultivated from the stem cells of various animals. It took a long time to catch on, but once it did, the animal population returned to normal levels, and the planet began to recover. Truth be told, I cannot tell the difference; all tastes just like it would coming from a live animal. Eventually, we headed into space, and the burden on the OG lessened, returning it to the way it was long ago.  Now it’s stronger than it has ever been. We got a bit of help once we started to interact with the other species we met out in the black.”

            “I am glad to hear that your kind was able to evolve and solve a problem. We do not eat other living beings. We live off, as you call them, fruits and vegetables that grow on our planet. Life is precious to us, and we do all we can to preserve the many smaller beings on our home. We take care of the weak and the injured. There are no meat-eaters on this planet. The concept to us was so illogical. When the Auckleds first came here, we were curious, and many headed out to greet them. When they attacked and began to consume us, we did not know how to react. Then the hunting began, and many were killed. So, we hid. Once we slept under the light of the stars. Now our homes are concealed in the caves, and we take cover during this time of the cycle when they come, but they tend to find some of our settlements. It is a sad time when one falls.”

            “Yeah, well, Aucks are bad for everyone; they won’t join the Hierarchy, and they prey on all who travel through any part of the black they claim as their own.  Many species have been wiped out by them.  They tend to keep clear of Hierarchy space, as our numbers are comprised of the seven strongest species humans have encountered, which makes them wary of open conflict.”

            “What is the Hierarchy? Can they help us?

            “Long story is what they are, and I do not think they would be the kind of help you want.”

            “Make it short.”

            “Fine. My kind took a long time to get our shit together. By the time we did, our world was running out of what we needed to live. Like the meat I told you about. Some problems we just could not solve on Earth, and we had to head out into the black to look for more... of well... everything. Not long after, we ran across the Quarven, and luckily for us and them, they turned out to be friendly types. Our two races exchanged goods and grew together. It was rocky at first, but we got there, and after a time, we went exploring more of the black together. They spread out far and encountered several more races. One of them being the Auckled, but that is a tale for another day. We made peace with most eventually. One race, the Magharunn, took a bit of time.”

            “Why?”

            “Well, they were like the Auckleds for a time. They had conquered a great deal of their space and had set their sights on my kind for their next conquest. Their tech was better than ours, but we had one advantage that most species in the black don’t seem to have.”

            “What would that be?” she asked.

            Balistor sighed. Izzy asked too many questions for him to make this a short story. “We procreate a lot. Most other races seem to expand to the limits a place can handle, and that is it; they move on. We tend to overgrow ourselves and get into situations we have to get ourselves out of. Much like your Auckled versus me problem here, in the war, there were just more of us than the Magharunn. That war played out like this place would, if I got involved. Over time, we used our numbers to whittle them down, along with some tech upgrades that we acquired from the Quarven, which didn’t hurt our cause. We are a crafty bunch, and we even adapted some of the Magharunn’s own tech to help us beat them. Got the reactive plating on my suit from their race. Anyway, they finally gave up, and they ended up joining the growing group of aliens that eventually became the Hierarchy. Oh, sure, the Magharunn don’t like us much, and we still don’t trust them, but it’s been a long time now, and they certainly like being part of the Hierarchy. It is the pinnacle, the best of all the races. We have encountered over a hundred different ones so far, and many of them comprise their own sub-races. The Hierarchy is made up of the seven largest and most advantaged races, minus the Auckled, who don’t play well with others. The Hierarchy takes care of the rest, like strict parents, I suppose. If a planet has an issue on it, be it internal or with another race, the Hierarchy sends out someone, and their findings are the final say. They ensure that all members within the Hierarchy have what they need to thrive and grow. That would be, in part, why I am here for you to crash-land in the first place. I am out surveying, looking in the unknown for resources and places to expand.”

            “I am glad you were sent out here. I would not be alive had you not.”

            “Well, you can live to be a ripe old age now, whatever that might be for your kind.”

            “Old, like you? I sense that your kind live to be just over one hundred years, but I see memories of yours that go back much longer. How is this so?”

            “Nosy one, you are.” He sighed again. This was the longest conversation Balistor had had with anyone in years, and it was starting to grate on his nerves. “Fine, there is a race, not many left of them, the Jaledova. The Jales secrete this goop from glands in their necks. Anyway, and don’t ask me how, but someone figured out that the goop, when injected, tends to slow down the rate of senescence in a few of the species in the Hierarchy. That is basically the body getting old,” he could tell by the look in her face that he was losing her with his story. Balistor barely understood the way most things worked himself. “I hear it slows the rate of decay on humans by one-one-hundredth or some such number. Basically, a human can live to be a thousand years old before age takes its toll. Other modes and tech can extend life even beyond that if you can afford it. Well, as you can imagine, that sort of thing became quite popular among those who had an abundance of power and fancy things worth holding onto, who wanted to keep it all a bit longer. It’s not really safe to be a Jale, I can tell you that most were hunted down and enslaved for their glands. A whole market for farming them developed. Keep the goop running, and you make a fortune.”

            “So, you are of the means to procure this goop, and that has kept you younger than you would otherwise be?”

            “Not really procure, no. I get it for free from a bloke I know.”

            “Why would the Jaledovan give for free what others prize so dearly that they would hunt and enslave for it?”

            “There was this one Jale who was kept by someone high up in the Hierarchy. Someone wealthy and powerful. One day, this Jale gets it in his head that he has had enough, and he escapes. Killed two of the high-ups’ children and a few of his staff on the way out. So, this wealthy man hires me to go hunt down and kill this Jale. He wanted him gone so bad he was willing to give up the goop just to see this Jale splattered on a rock somewhere.”

            “And did you find and kill this poor Jaledovan?” She looked worried that the one they had chosen for help would do such a thing.

            “I found him alright. Had him on his knees, about to splatter his blue brains all over the ground, when he started jabbering at me about himself and how he just wants to live. Well, I have heard all that before, but this time he struck a chord with me. It seems this Jale had been around humans for a long time and developed a liking for many of the same things I did. Same human foods, same music, he even has the same sick sense of humour as me, too. I let him keep talking, and I looked at him and thought to myself that if I had that goop coming out of me, I might well be on the other side of my gun, staring up and begging for my life. So, I decided to let him live. We enacted an elaborate death for him, used my BEV to film it all, and sent it to his old boss. It worked ‘cause I got paid the second half of my fee and the Jale was free. He was so happy we struck up a deal. I keep him safe, and he gives me a free supply of the goop. Works for us both. That was about two hundred years ago, now, so I am just over two hundred and forty, give or take a bit. Stopped counting a long time ago.”

            “Does this Jale have a name?” Izzy asked. Balistor was surprised at how this innocent creature was able to get him to talk about himself.

            “Fondor, I named him. He likes it. Anyway, Old Fondor stays at my place, tucked out on the outer rims, where no one goes. Creeping around like a dammed Nosferatu. Anyway, those few who know my place know well to leave it be. So, he is safe there as long as he keeps his nose out of sight.”

            “That was nice of you to do.”

            “Not really. I get what I need out of him, you see.  Everything has a price… a cost to it. You do not