Blood, Fire, Ice, And Void: Ripples In An Emerald Sea By Adam Mannan
Prologue 193391 First Cycle Third Quarter. Ilendum’s Orbital Station.
Air churned sluggishly from low-grade recyclers, like an ailing last breath. Overpowered lighting assaulted the eyes and revealed the shoddy squalor of dated and worn furnishings. Dirt blackened padding, escaped from the split plastic coverings of waiting benches, lay where it had been kicked by hurried feet days or perhaps seasons ago. Litter wrappings, drink cartons and various other discarded travellers’ paraphernalia ornamented the feculence. High overhead an elaborate crystal lattice of interlocking glass-alloy was another victim of sloth for its begrimed panels barely revealed the emerald-gold splendour of Ilendum and the inscrutable chrysoprase luminescence of Proxima Behyeb, one of the system’s binary stars. From the balcony of the third terrace Khasgal Oerit stared down into the busy throng of disembarkers from the last ship. He felt tranquil as though everything was now in the hands of fate. Indeed it was. He was alone on the third tier. The few shops and agencies that remained on the space station since the Sylarbs took control had been concentrated on the ground floor and the upper tiers were dark and empty. Even the elevators and moving stairways to those floors were unpowered. He racked the slide of his double action pistol. The custom trigger was feather light. The old semi-automatic had killed thirty-two Sylarb Planetary Security Force officers, now it was going to kill a woman for those hated oppressors. He would have liked to look at the holopicture of his family again, but he had put it along with all his identification chips into a disposal chute. No matter the outcome, his existence had ended. Indeed there were lots of things he would have preferred to his present situation. He merely hoped that after he killed the woman the Sylarbs would keep their word and free his family. Khasgal saw his target. He knew her instantly for his mark; for she stood a head taller than the Sylarbs and Ilendish, and her alien clothes seemed a blend of uniform and reinforced pressure suit. Solid, muscled, yet willowy and lithe, she wove effortlessly through the space station’s crowds oblivious to the weight of the bulging duffel thrown carelessly over her shoulder. She was heading towards the ticket bureau to secure a place on the next shuttle downside, as he knew she must. Where better to commit an assassination for the Sylarbs than in the entryway to their immigration office? She was moving faster than he expected, but since he had measured the time from his vantage to where he would pull the trigger, compensating was not a problem. He left the terrace and descended the immobile stairways in no great hurry. He kept his semi-automatic at his side shielded from sight by the natural fall of his rain mantle. The gun felt heavier than it ever had and Khasgal could feel the slickness of his palm. Something was going to go wrong, he was certain. My family! The way was clear. He closed his eyes for the last few steps of the stairs. Everything would be fine. He would kill the woman and then be shot by the Security Forces. There was a wide supporting pillar to one side of the escalator that obscured her from him as he stepped off the stairs. Khasgal opened his eyes and brought his pistol to firing ready. She was tall, and they had told him that only a headshot would kill her. He aimed a little higher than where a Sylarb’s head would be. His mark passed the pillar and Khasgal’s half breath caught in his throat even as his finger eased the trigger. Spectacular only captured the shadow of her perfect majesty. Strong hands of rapture seized his heart. He was to the side of her and yet she saw him. Her head swung to face him as she spun. The severe focussed intensity of her gaze was chilling; it would have paralysed him had he been less disciplined. Those eyes that were incredibly clear and green, flecked with gold like his beloved Ilendum, should have been mesmerizing. Instead they were hard, terrifying windows onto blood, death and pain on a scale he could not comprehend. For only the second time in his life an execution was not a precise series of rehearsed actions. It was disorientating; like the components of motion moved at the wrong velocity. His first round passed through where her head had been as her spin put her back to him. Uselessly his brain noted that one of her arms was much shorter and in a sling with a bulbous cylindrical device. As she came out of her spin, his semi-automatic ejected the first round’s jacket and reloaded the chamber. That was wrong he should have been able to put two rounds in her head before she reacted. It was so fast and dizzyingly strange. Khasgal fired again, but this time he went for centre of mass; she was too fast for a headshot. He did not see where his bullet struck her, for the incredible force of her duffel smashed into his torso and face. He thought it must be how it felt to be hit by a speeding ground car. There was no pain, just strange cracking and popping sounds from his body and the feel of flight.
Adam Mannan 